AME-LOT Repurposes Shipping Pallets To Create a Transforming Facade

French architect <a href="http://www.stephanemalka.com/" target="_blank">Stephane Malka</a> sees salvaging and repurposing materials as the best form of ecological design, and his new proposal for the facade of student housing in Paris is a great example of this. The entire street front is covered in hinged <a href="http://inhabitat.com/tag/shipping-pallets/">shipping pallets</a> to create an articulating skin that provides shade, movement, and ventilation. Malka is known for his <a href="http://inhabitat.com/parasitic-guerrilla-architecture-hijacks-the-arche-de-la-defense/" target="_blank">parasitic and guerrilla designs</a> in Paris, and <a href="http://www.stephanemalka.com/en/2011/03/ame-lot/" target="_blank">AME-LOT</a> is a continuation of his concepts. This readymade assemblage is sophisticated, precise, and organic all at the same time.

AME-LOT is a proposal by French architect Stephane Malka to re-skin a student residence in Paris with shipping pallets.

The modular facade is composed of hundreds of pallets strung together with hinges, which allows them to bend and articulate.

This transforming facade allows the users to adjust the facade for light, ventilation or shade.

Modern by design, the building's skin is also organic through its use of materials.

Malka believes that ecology and sustainability is not about producing new materials, but in repurposing old ones.

As he describes on his <a href="http://www.stephanemalka.com/en/2011/03/ame-lot/" target="_blank">website</a>, "The reappropriation of materials recycles the existing without additional processing, which would cost energy in terms of production and create byproduct pollution."

"The real environmental approach consists not in destruction, but in superimposing interventions upon our built heritage."

"It consists of a new land strategy, unreferenced on a parcel, constructed in a de facto “ecology” of means."

"The modularity of the various palettes creates varied geometries, which are based on use and constantly regenerated."

"No building is destroyed, and no pollution generated. The skin consists of an existing module: the wooden pallet."

"The modularity of the various palettes creates varied geometries, which are based on use and constantly regenerated."

"The student housing on rue Amelot is a project that inserts itself into an urban interstice: the thickness of a blind wall."

"Held using horizontal hinges, the pallets contract towards the top, allowing privacy or large openings."