When a working-class neighbourhood was on the brink of demolition, the Paris City Council decided to turn it into a showcase for urban regeneration. On Rue des Orteaux in Paris, the Brussels-based firm BOB361 created twenty-one comfortable social housing flats, combining new and renovated elements.

“A project like this is interesting because the city council deliberately chose architecture over demolition,” says Ivo Vanhamme, a partner at bob361. In 2015, the firm completed no fewer than twenty-one flats on Rue des Orteaux in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.