Calme Bloc

Architects, authors, and photographers’ different viewpoints on a dense and complex building in Paris’s 20th arrondissement. Photographer Myr Muratet, who spent several weeks living there, offers us an authentic reportage of the building’s appropriation by its new inhabitants.

Located just above the city’s eight-lane ring road, this calm block was recently completed by Parisian architecture firms Chartier Dalix and Avenier Cornejo, which combines a kindergarten with 240 studio apartments for young workers in a rapidly changing neighbourhood. Its users’ behaviour, habits, and adaptations confirm or subvert the designers’ intentions. As the building weighs anchor in its neighbourhood, not only does the alchemy of this process resonate in the immediate surroundings, but also further afield, in the wake of individual users’ destinies. Inquisitive visitor Sébastien Marot sets sail on an urban and architectural cruise, exploring the physical, social, and historical flux that is the undercurrent of this built reality.