The «physical» barrier formed by the Northern facade protects the interior vegetal hearts from the noise, maintaining a clear view of the landscape and of the University of Nanterre through two large windows faults.

These 172 apartments are arranged as a superposition of mineral monoliths, floating at the edge of the rails. Those monoliths are carried by a retail base which constitutes the base of the entire block. The project takes reference in the image blocks from the gypsy quarries of Cormeilles-en-Paris 7 km away from Paris.

"Le Rocher" represents a dug, plucked and tamed monolith; a space carved into the ground, open to the “Boulevard des Provinces  Françaises”. Combining architecture and nature as it would be in an abandoned quarry, wilderness enters into its heart and officiates as a filter plant, as a green lung.

As its name suggests, this “Coeur de Quartier” is a familiar universe. It reminds and superimposes domestic scales that we know: the great subjects of the forest of Fontainebleau, a generous, public and ostentatious nature, but also a secluded, secret and exclusive garden... The vegetal planted hearts are the lungs of the inhabited rock.