Connecting office and housing: a new real estate offer that will appeal to more than one. 

The term “small office/home office” (SOHO) refers to a micro-enterprise often managed in small offices or at home, or even virtually without dedicated premises. Their managers are generally self-employed and don’t need ample office space to conduct their business. Adapted to the needs of artisans, designers and liberal professions, these SOHOs are inspired by the workshops where artists live and create their works.

In the northeast of Paris, near the Porte de la Chapelle, the SOHO Chapelle project recently appeared. It was designed by two Parisian firms: Jacques Moussafir Architects and Nicolas Hugoo Architecture. In short, you live where you work. Or more or less: in the case of this redevelopment project of land belonging to the SNCF, the office spaces are directly connected to the homes or, at the very least, are in the same building. The inhabitants also choose to connect their workspace to their accommodation through an optional slab provided in the development. 

An urban laboratory

In fact, associating home and the office is a not-so-revolutionary practice. As the company responsible for the marketing of SOHO recalls, “it is a formula that already existed in the Middle Ages when the baker lived above his oven. In some Haussmann buildings, traders lived upstairs.”

The mixed-use project links two residential towers (105 social residential units) to a common base and offers around twenty SoHo spaces as well as some retails.  The district, called Chapelle International, is also intended to be a laboratory for new urban trends, with urban agriculture projects and a logistics platform to supply Paris with “short-distance” goods. 

Tags: Chapelle International, Jacques Moussafir Architects, Nicolas Hugoo Architecture, Paris, Small Office Home Office, SOHO, Soho Chapelle