CBA teamed up with Atela Architects of Paris and were shortlisted to submit a scheme for affordable housing in Melun Senart, a new town near paris. The competition was organised jointly by CABE and DAPA for innovative social housing in these new suburbs. We look at this territory as a landscape that is becoming built upon, not as an entity with new quarters being added. Our proposal is a field of dwellings, clustered together relying on internal patios from private external space. Loosely based of the North African village archetype. The patio in turn opens onto courtyards used by residents to socialise and play, a car free zone that fosters communality. Pavilion-like boxes above provide an outlook to the landscape beyond the tight-knit 'village'.