BUILT BETWEEN 1932 AND 1936, La Cité de la Muette, the Silent City, was hailed as one of the most technically advanced social housing projects of its time.

Located in the suburb of Drancy, some 10 km from the centre of Paris, it was designed by the architects Marcel Lods and Eugène Beaudouin as a cite-jardin (a garden city) with a mix of high-rise and low-rise buildings built using a new building technology comprising a steel frame and a system of prefabricated concrete panels. The engineer Eugène Mopin designed the construction system and Jean Prouvé designed the system of metal forms used in the casting of the concrete elements.

The sixteen-story high buildings in La Cité de la Muette were the first American style ‘skyscrapers’ in France.

La Cité de la Muette – The Silent City