Paris Affordable Housing

CONCEPT
GOLDEN PROPORTIONS

PERIODE
2019

LOCATE
PARIS

One of the key drivers behind rising housing prices is the intense demand for rental accommodation, compounded by the growing proliferation of short-term tourist lets. Landlords increasingly favor short-term rentals, which often generate significantly higher monthly returns than long-term tenancies. This shift has reduced the availability of permanent housing, and when combined with sustained demand, has rendered affordable living nearly unattainable in the City of Lights.

The Paris Affordable Housing Challenge calls upon designers to propose sustainable, scalable solutions to Paris’s housing crisis. With no fixed site specified, the competition encourages adaptable architectural models that can be deployed across multiple locations to expand the city’s housing stock. Proposals are expected to accommodate a wide range of inhabitants—families, professionals, couples, and individuals—while remaining flexible to evolving spatial and social needs.

Participants are urged to challenge conventional notions of housing and community, balancing creativity with practicality to ensure that proposals retain the potential for real-world implementation. The ambition is to design affordable housing concepts for Paris that are economical in land use, efficient in material consumption, and replicable at scale.

Our proposal is rooted in proportion-driven spatial design, drawing on the principles of the Golden Ratio to create efficient yet generous living environments. The project introduces a system of modular housing units that can function independently or be appended to existing structures, offering adaptability over time and enabling incremental growth in housing capacity.