A Human-Scale Urban Block
Along Route de Thionville, a vacant gap site and a dilapidated building will give way to an urban block.
A commercial and office-oriented ground floor integrates the various pedestrian and vehicular entrances around a covered plaza set back from the street.
Reflecting both the pressure on the local real-estate market and new building regulations, the ground floor has been compressed to a minimum ceiling height, thereby making it possible to create an additional residential floor above.
Occupying nearly the entire depth of the plot, the ground-floor urban base benefits from a peripheral outdoor space—a “patio perimeter”—that provides complete openness, a substantial influx of natural light, and an extension of the retail and/or office spaces into the outdoors.

In response to the vertical compression of the upper floors, the design favors compact dwellings. The east-facing units overlooking Route de Thionville are one-bedroom apartments, while the southwest façade accommodates two-bedroom units.
The clear and regular layout eliminates circulation space wherever possible in favor of living areas and allows for adaptable apartment configurations through movable partitions.
Likewise, each unit includes a private outdoor loggia, accessible without barriers from both the bedroom and the living room.
The façades embody the ambition of maximizing natural daylight within the apartments. Living rooms and bedrooms therefore open fully onto the loggias and as much as possible toward the street, interrupted only by spandrel panels required to meet fire-safety regulations.

These opaque spandrel panels, with an interior height of 75 cm, restore privacy to the apartment interiors while contributing to the building’s external expression.
The façade is clad in mechanically fixed aluminum composite panels.
As a result, the appearance of the building will evolve throughout the day, diffusely reflecting both natural daylight and the artificial lighting of the circulation areas.
Faced with the imperative to condense development and the resulting high density, the architecture of the OBAN project seeks, through the clarity of its plan, to reduce elements to their essentials, creating relationships, uses, and opportunities for appropriation at a human scale within an urban block.