Croix housing

In Croix, in the Lille metropolitan area, Loger Habitat and Anaa architects are developing Villa Aura, a twenty-eight-apartment residence of two- to four-room flats on rue Alphonse Quennoy. The site is a quiet, long-established residential neighbourhood; the building inserts itself without forcing it, holding its volumes to the scale of the houses around it. Materials and tones are taken from the immediate surroundings rather than imported, so the new building reads as a measured addition to the existing fabric. The architecture is contemporary but discreet, the aim less to mark the street than to take its place on it.