modular follies: studio malka plans vertical village in south of france

growing up in montpellier

Studio Malka Architecture presents its ‘Modular Follies’ in the center of Montpellier, a city in the south of France, as a major landmark building intended to revitalize the neighborhood. The design team aims to establish an alternative site featuring self-managed residential spaces and hubs, creating a new, iconic cultural destination. This ultra-ecological and innovative architecture is designed to be constructed without damaging the existing site or affecting the site with additional construction.

‘Why is it a Folly? This project is not a real estate project, it is a mobile, living, organic structure, combining architecture and urban planning, community life and culture open to all,’ writes studio founder Stephan Malka. ‘The Modular Folies are built on a flexible and extensible structure, allowing an organic development process, thus transforming the morphology of the Folies as new occupants and their modules arrive and leave.’

images © Studio Malka Architecture

flexible co-living spaces by studio malka

Studio Malka Architecture employs an historic, nineteenth-century building as the foundations for its Modular Follies, an eight-story high vertical village. The Paris-based architects plan to preserve and structurally reinforce this existing building, thus maintaining the city’s fabric from the level of the sidewalk. The project marks a forward-thinking proposal that combines innovative architectural methods and versatile functionality. It integrates co-living options alongside communal spaces including libraries, kitchens, restaurants, cafes, a hotel, a cultural center with exhibition spaces, immersive exhibit rooms, hanging gardens, and open-air leisure zones.

‘This not a building in the traditional sense of the term, as it actually superimpose several constructions synthesized within a single plot,’ the team continues. ‘It would be more appropriate to define it as a vertical village; a superposition of several fragments of urban components with its own streets, businesses, activities and housing on almost all floors.’

ultra-ecological ‘modular follies’

Each module is invested with one or more functions, as for individual or shared housing capsules, fully equipped, wired and with furniture integrated into the structure, completely ready for use. Entirely prefabricated in local workshops for a clean, fast and nuisance-free construction site, the capsules are flexible and modular, allowing the building to be enlarged in the long term according to its use

‘All materials used, including the metallic facade, have been up-cycled, refurbished, and refinished as new,’ the architects explain. ‘The result is a mobile metabolic eco-architecture, built without tabula rasa or polluting high-tech escalation. The Modular Follies are also respectful of the context and the existing, both heritage in its preservation of the historic building on which it stands, and fundamentally contemporary in its hybrid approach.‘