This residential building for students is located in a difficult environment, that is to say a small plot against two pre-existing blank walls, facing place des Volontaires and with the river Rhone in the background. The cooperative “La Ciguë” commissioned these eight apartments on eight storeys above the ground floor. The project plans for shared services on the ground floor at road level and bedrooms with a common area on the other floors. By its urban location, the building can only have windows on two sides. The clever massing composition dominates the place whilst remaining within the proportions of neighbourhood constructions. It allows the creation of two terraces used as outside meeting places for the young tenants. The typology is rather conventional, whilst adapting to the need to back onto the walls, placing the staircase leading to the apartments against the gable wall and the day areas on the road side. The use of brick at the heart of the town of Geneva, where stone and rough cast generally predominate, is, at first glance, rather strange, but the subtle dosage of shape and material has allowed this project to integrate quite easily into in this formerly industrial neighborhood. The presence of brick spandrel breast walls on the façade of the former gold-melting factory, and the stone colour of the former Forces Motrices factory have also become features of this small building.