REINVENTING THE CITY. STUDY AND PROJECTS FOR PARIS AND ‘LA VILLETTE’

At the beginning of 2015 Paris launched an international competition titled ‘Reiventer Paris’ aimed at developing new and advanced urban projects on several sites paying particularly attention on those included in its historical context. ‘Reinventer Paris’ was one of the premises for a global debate about the city and its transformation. The interest about the urban renovation inspired a study titled: in Italian: Paris les Halles. Storie di un futuro conteso. This paper summarises the main outcomes of the study focusing on the urban renovation between architecture imaginary and policy making process. Furthermore, it deals with the new housing models developed in Paris in the last decades, particularly in ‘la Villette’ (19th arrondissement of Paris), a neighbourhood between the routes linked to Flanders and Germany and the Villette’s park. The disposal of the district river infrastructures has turned the neighbourhood, mainly devoted - up to the late seventies - to manufacturing, in an opportunity for reimaging several sites, often clustered in XVIII and XIX blocks. repetition. I’ll change in : “following the above mentionend research ‘la Villette’ has even become a design experience carried out by the School of Architecture of Politecnico di Torino. Although ‘la Villete’ is one of the less expensive neighbourhood to buying a house in Paris, around 6.500 €/m2, for most part of the citizens such cost is still prohibitive. It follows the need to develop small houses with shared and eco-friendly services in unfilled areas. Some architectural projects here presented taken up the challenge without loosing sight of the integration in the historical urban fabric.