START-Ivry is a five-tower housing cluster in Ivry-sur-Seine that treats the dwelling plan as the primary generator of architecture. Slender volumes, a mixed-use plinth, and a continuous seventh-floor band of shared rooms and terraces organize 288 units across social, intermediate, and market tenures. The project couples a plan-led adaptability strategy with envelope and urban decisions that prioritize daylight, cross-ventilation, and a permeable public realm at the confluence of the Seine and Marne.
START-Ivry Technical Information
- Architects: STAR strategies + architecture
- Location: Ivry-sur-Seine, Greater Paris, France
- Gross Area: 22,863 m2 | 246,000 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2015 – 2025
- Photographs: © Nicolas Grosmond, © Nicolas Trouillard, © Kamel Khalfi, © Vladimir Partalo
We started from the inside out: the floor plan and the inhabitant. Apartments are inherently adaptable, designed to divide or grow over time; here, the richness within shapes the exterior, not the reverse.
– Beatriz Ramo
START-Ivry Photographs
Inside-Out Housing: Plan-Led Typologies and Adaptability
START-Ivry is organized by dwelling logic rather than an external envelope. Plans are structured to permit reconfiguration across a spectrum of life scenarios without increasing overall area. Divisible multi-bedroom units can split to form autonomous studios, while super-adaptable two-bedroom types accommodate cohabitation, care arrangements, or remote work. “Plus” and “bonus” alcoves function as dens, workspaces, or sleeping niches, absorbing programmatic drift with minimal construction. The plan anticipates movement, including kitchens that can be relocated to free up an extra bedroom, adjoining units that can be combined, and door positions that allow sub-units to gain independent access.
Services and circulation support this flexibility. Wet cores are aligned to broaden the range of possible transformations, and shafts are placed to keep future plumbing moves compact and economical. Corridors are minimized or activated as storage and utility bands, reducing waste space while enabling reconfiguration. Naturally lit kitchens and bathrooms are treated as essential infrastructure rather than afterthoughts, enhancing daily use and reducing reliance on artificial lighting. Storage is abundant and distributed, protecting living rooms from furniture overload and preserving the capacity to re-partition without undermining primary spaces.
The procurement process reinforced the plan-first approach. The architect’s methodology, rather than a pre-fixed developer brief, set the framework for typological diversity and adaptability. Regular multi-stakeholder design workshops consolidated key principles at the plan and unit aggregation levels, which then cascaded upward to inform the formation, massing, and articulation of shared spaces.
Slender Towers and Envelope Performance
The towers are exceptionally shallow at approximately 14 meters, a dimension unusual for buildings rising up to 56 meters. This restrained depth secures high daylight penetration and cross-ventilation while allowing a broad mix of unit types. Approximately 90 percent of dwellings have double or triple orientation, which improves thermal comfort and reduces mechanical dependence during temperate seasons. Shallow plates also ease internal reconfiguration, since deeper structural spans and long interior runs are avoided. The building section serves as a tool for energy moderation as much as it does for typological richness.
Massing is organized into three vertical registers that calibrate the project’s urban presence: street, city, and sky. The lower register addresses the ground condition and the commercial plinth; the middle register holds the bulk of residential floors and establishes the reading of the cluster in the city; the upper register contains setbacks, terraces, and roof elements that tune skyline scale. A continuous band at the seventh level consolidates shared spaces and terraces into a horizontal datum that visually ties the five towers together. This band interrupts vertical repetition and anchors the towers to a collective social plane while maintaining slenderness and light access.
Envelope performance is pursued through geometry, rather than technology. Slender depth, generous openings aligned to cross-ventilation paths, and recessed loggias produce a fabric-first response that limits gains and losses. Subsequent systems, including geothermal heating and targeted energy reductions, build on the base efficiency achieved by the plan, section, and porosity of the envelope.
Façade as a Record of Use
The façades follow no rigid grid: windows, balconies, ‘plugs’, and loggias are placed to serve domestic use, from storage to adaptability. What might seem like ‘disorder’ becomes the architectural expression of life, mirroring that of its inhabitants. Colour accents act as an architectural code, with a palette revealing interior functions. The result is a vibrant architecture in which form, use, and meaning are inseparable: an architecture that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Material and color operate as legible codes. Raw concrete and red surfaces reference Ivry’s construction culture of concrete and brick, tying the cluster to a local lineage of experimental housing. Color-coded jambs and entries communicate interior functions and typologies to residents, facilitating wayfinding and reinforcing the plan’s adaptability logics. Loggias and balconies double as environmental devices, providing shade and acting as intermediate thermal buffers while enabling unit subdivision without compromising daylight or privacy.
The heterogeneous façade aligns with the project’s social mix. Two towers combine different housing regimes along the same corridor, a configuration rarely pursued, and the elevations openly show this diversity. Rather than masking differences behind uniform cladding, the building envelope accepts and displays variability as an architectural consequence of plan-led living.
Urban Interface, Collective Space, and Sustainability
A mixed-use plinth with 14 adaptable retail units sets the project into the neighborhood’s daily economy and frames new public spaces totaling 2,600 m². A riverside square addresses the Seine, while two permeable alleys cut through the base to connect the waterfront to the main avenue and organize long views to the cable bridge. The ground condition is therefore not a podium but a porous threshold where housing, retail, and public circulation interlock. This permeability distributes entrances, animates edges, and reduces the typical separation between tall residential buildings and the street.
Collective amenities are not confined to the ground. More than 2,000 m² of shared terraces and upper-level communal rooms are distributed across the towers, with guest rooms and multipurpose spaces embedded within the residential stack. The seventh-floor band acts as a social hinge that consolidates these programs and enhances circulation quality in line with the project’s “good tower” principles. By positioning shared spaces at various heights, as well as on the ground, the scheme choreographs relationships between the city and the sky, encouraging the inhabitation of roofscapes and intermediate levels rather than relying solely on residual ground courtyards.
Environmental measures combine fabric and systems, achieving a 20 percent reduction in operational energy relative to current standards, utilizing geothermal heating, and implementing a structure and façade strategy that incorporates 20 percent low-carbon concrete to reduce embodied carbon. Crucially, adaptability is framed as a sustainability tactic. Divisible dwellings, super-adaptable types, and functional alcoves enable new configurations or additional units without new building resources, aligning social and economic resilience with environmental restraint. This approach addresses the chronic mismatch between standard plans and the varied trajectories of households, positioning transformation capacity as a core environmental performance criterion rather than a late-stage amenity.
START-Ivry Plans
START-Ivry Image Gallery
About STAR strategies + architecture
Founded in 2006 and based in Rotterdam, STAR strategies + architecture is led by Spanish architect Beatriz Ramo. The firm works across scales in architecture and urbanism, emphasizing adaptability and user-driven design. Known for competitions and research-informed practice in France, the Netherlands, and beyond, STAR interrogates the standardization of housing and advocates for flexible models suited to modern living. Their notable projects include experimental housing typologies, with START-Ivry in Greater Paris representing a culmination of over a decade of work on resilient, socially driven architecture.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Architect: Beatriz Ramo / STAR strategies + architecture
- Author: Beatriz Ramo López de Angulo
- Project Lead: Danae Zachariaki
- Team: Efraín Pérez Del Barrio, Ivan Guerrero, Geoffrey Clamour, Syeva Roest, Javier Cuartero, Bittor Arrillaga, Maria Castillo, Iris Ramas, Marc Coma
- Structural engineers: EDEIS (design phase)
- Landscape designers: Bernd Upmeyer / BOARD (Bureau of Architecture, Research and Design)
- Client: Phase 1: SADEV 94; Phase 2: SOGEPROM Réalisations
- Construction company: BOUYGUES BÂTIMENT
- Urban agriculture: TOPAGER
- Property management: FONCIA
- Surveyor: Gexpertise
- CERQUAL advisory: CITAE
- Works supervision: HOME
- Building control office: BTP Consultants
- Notary: Cheuvreux Notaires
- Construction cost (2020): €43,367,730 excl. VAT
