Sou Fujimoto, Nicolas Laisné and Dimitri Roussel will be building a new gateway to the city of Rosny-sous-Bois in Grand Paris. Their project, Village Vertical, has been chosen as the winning proposal for the "Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris" competition. The team includes landscape and urban designers from Atelier Georges and urban developers from La Compagnie de Phalsbourg and REI Habitat.
The Village Vertical is a 28,200 square-meter mixed-use project. On the ground floor and roof top, the architects plan to have 6,000 square metres of open community space such as a food-court, a daycare center, a family office, community centers, an escape game and a rooftop bar.
A sports hub will span the entire height of one section of the complex. The hub will feature climbing walls, urban soccer pitches and a gym.
The other levels will be dedicated to 17,000 square meters of housing, including 5,000 square meters of social housing.
The structure will comprise of timber frame, 120 meters in length, with elegant white columns, irregular balconies and glazed facades. While the structure is certainly imposing, the materials and shapes lend it lightness.
The Grand Paris project aims to improve life for residents and to even out disparity between territories while building a sustainable city. As a part of the project, Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris has held competitions to rejuvenate 112 sites across 75 municipalities, of which Rosny-sous-Bois is site number 93. To anchor Paris' status as an international megacity, the Grand Paris project will also be introducing the Grand Paris Express, the largest transport project in Europe.
These ambitious developments are not contained solely within Paris. Outside of the capital, Bjarge Ingels Group has won the masterplan competition for Europa City and will be introducing 800,000 square meters of cultural, recreational and retail development in Triangle de Gonesse, France.
Sou Fujimoto, Nicolas Laisné and Dimitri Roussel are no strangers to working together or building projects in France: they have also worked on the Ecole Polytechnic learning center at Paris-Saclay and a tree-inspired housing tower for Montpellier.
