The Common Tower is an ambitious project: constructing a 50-meter-high timber-structure building in Paris. Our design subtly articulates the urban challenges unique to the neighborhood, the architectural requirements inherent to the program, and the technical complexities of mass timber construction. The Common Tower thus stands as a manifesto for a new era where timber construction and metropolitan challenges finally converge.

The potential of wood in bridging architecture and structure is expressed in multiple ways, from the entrance hall to the roof garden. On the facade, the wood surfaces just beneath an aluminum skin; it is also integrated into the undersides and within the thickness of the walls—where it is best protected. The closer one gets to the tower, the more the wood reveals itself as views lift toward the sky. Wood is equally present inside the building: the student housing units feature a maritime pine “lookout alcove” that opens up to the city.

At mid-height, just above the historic 25-meter Parisian height limit, the tower steps back to create a variety of shared spaces with differing levels of privacy; the collective dimension of the program is thus visibly expressed on the facade. These common areas extend outdoors through cantilevered balconies and terraces designed to support vegetation and biodiversity, cascading all the way to the top. The rooftop terrace is a large panoramic garden complete with vegetable patches and planted trees. Finally, the project establishes the conditions for maximum reversibility and adaptability. The post-and-beam structure is placed along the facade to generate the widest possible free space between the perimeter and the concrete core.