While the implementation of Ma Yansong's Roman project is postponed, Paris has a chance to become the owner of the first object in Europe by a Chinese star architect. Together with local firm Accueil-Biecher Architectes, MAD won the competition for the design of a residential complex in the Clichy-Batignolles area, adjacent to the Martin Luther King Park and the Renzo Piano Palace of Justice under construction.
The project, called UNIC, envisages the construction of a 13-storey volume with a height of 50 m. The asymmetrical, gradually tapering silhouette of the building helps to ensure the complete merging of the living space with the adjacent park. The complex, organic shape of the glazed floors is also important: concrete structures devoid of facades form terraces and green areas with spectacular panoramas (the Eiffel Tower should be visible from the upper tiers). At the podium level, the building is merged with the adjacent community housing facility. This area will accommodate the entrance to the subway, kindergarten, shops, restaurants and is intended as a community center for the entire block.
Interestingly, with all the difference in the tasks (in the first case - reconstruction, and in the second - new construction), there are clear parallels between the proposals of the MAD bureau for Rome and for Paris. A similar scheme was chosen in the residential complex of the same authors in the Huangshan mountains. The direction of the search is obvious: openness, conciseness, attention to the environment and, at the same time, complex layered structures interacting with nature. This time, trying to get as close as possible to the proposed environment, Ma Yansong participates in various seminars and meetings of working groups with local officials, architects, urban planners. The UNIC residential complex is already under construction and should be completed in 2018. I would like to believe that Yansong's second attempt to find points of interaction with the European community will be successful.
