Rethinking Housing for a Diverse Society

In Ivry-sur-Seine, a city with a radical architectural legacy on the edge of Paris, a bold new housing experiment is rewriting the rules of how homes are conceived, built, and lived in. Designed by STAR strategies + architecture, the project called START-Ivry positions itself as both a manifesto and a demonstration: proof that more humane, flexible, and sustainable housing can be achieved within tight budgets and standard urban constraints.

Photo credit: Nicolas Grosmond

Photo credit: Nicolas Grosmond

Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

Photo credit: Nicolas Grosmond

What is START?

START stands for Social, Transformable, Affordable, and Resilient Typologies. It is a design philosophy that rejects the mass-produced, standardised floor plans dominating much of contemporary housing. Instead, START begins with the resident, restoring the primacy of the floor plan and ensuring that spaces adapt to evolving life circumstances — from a growing family to co-living arrangements, from remote work to ageing in place. Its guiding principle: housing must adapt to people, not the other way around.

The 10 Adaptability Principles by STAR.
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

The 8 Quality Principles by STAR.
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

The Ivry Pilot Project

The first pilot, START-Ivry, comprises five slender towers along the Seine and Marne rivers, with 288 units spanning social, intermediate, and market-rate housing. Despite modest surfaces, the scheme delivers a variety of "bonus" and "plus" typologies — units that can be divided, expanded, or reconfigured over time. Kitchens can migrate to make way for bedrooms, alcove spaces can double as offices, and large apartments can be split to generate rental income.

START – Adaptability principle I: Large divisible dwelling (≥ 3 bedrooms).
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

START – Adaptability principle II: Super-adaptable dwelling (two bedrooms).
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

Examples of floor plans of the START buildings.
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

The buildings’ expressive façades reflect the diversity within: windows, balconies, and loggias are positioned according to use, resulting in a lively "disorder" that mirrors domestic life. Shared spaces — from panoramic terraces to guest rooms — weave a collective layer into the vertical community. At ground level, START integrates shops, services, and public plazas, binding the project to its urban surroundings.

START – Diagrams: Common Spaces, Common Terraces, Programme, Organisation of the Towers.
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

START – Location plan and site plan, 7th floor.
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

START – Render-collages.
Photo credit: STAR strategies + architecture

A New Philosophy and Process

START is as much about process as product. It emerged through the "Inverse Method": the architect was chosen first, with developers later competing to realise the vision. This reversed the conventional hierarchy, ensuring the design’s integrity and placing housing quality above developer interests.

Photo credit: Nicolas Grosmond

Photo credit: Kamel Khalfi

Photo credit: Nicolas Trouillard

The project is equally pioneering in its definition of sustainability. While it reduces energy consumption and uses low-carbon concrete, its deeper contribution is social: housing that adapts to life’s transitions is, by definition, more sustainable than rigid units destined for obsolescence.

Photo credit: Nicolas Grosmond

Photo credit: Kamel Khalfi

Photo credit: Nicolas Grosmond

Legacy and Recognition

Ivry-sur-Seine has long been a laboratory of housing innovation, with icons like Jean Renaudie and Renée Gailhoustet shaping its skyline. START continues this lineage while updating it for today’s plural society. Already, the project has earned acclaim, including the 2024 French National Women Architects Prize and two 2025 AZ Awards.

Photo credit: Vladimir Partalo

Photo credit: Vladimir Partalo

Photo credit: Vladimir Partalo

Towards a New Culture of Housing

Ultimately, START-Ivry by STAR strategies + architecture offers more than new towers: it proposes a cultural shift in how we think about domestic space. By rooting architecture in the lived realities of its inhabitants, it suggests that the future of housing lies not in uniformity, but in adaptability and resilience.

STAR strategies + architecture

Founded in Rotterdam in 2006 by Spanish architect Beatriz Ramo (1979), STAR strategies + architecture works on projects and research of any scale in the fields of architecture and urbanism, taking responsibility for all phases of the process — from concept to completion.

The practice has won awards in international competitions for housing, public buildings, and urban planning in France, the Netherlands, China, Iceland, Lebanon, Norway, and Spain, as well as several distinctions — including awards granted by Architizer, Archello, FRAME, Azure Awards, Architectenweb, and MIX Interiors — and the ARVHA National French Prize for Female Architects in 2024.