Case Study: HAMONIC + MASSON & Associés achieves Paris skyline breakthrough with Vectorworks

Breaking Through the Parisian Skyline

HAMONIC + MASSON & Associés, a Paris architecture firm, seized the opportunity created by a 2011 change in city planning to design a landmark mixed-use high-rise in the Masséna-Bruneseau area. After winning a competition for the Bouygues Immobilier–backed project, the firm faced the challenge of breaking Paris’s historic low skyline while integrating offices, retail, parking and 200 housing units (public and private) in a way that respected the urban context.

Using Vectorworks Architect, the team produced the dual-towered ZAC Masséna with vertically shifted floors that form a swirling prism, maximize daylight through varied orientations, and sit on a shared retail base. Delivered in early 2015, the building became the first 50‑meter housing development in Paris since the 1970s, successfully unifying social and private housing and establishing a new precedent for vertical, mixed‑use urban design in the city.

HAMONIC + MASSON & Associés

Jean-Christophe Masson

Director