The project is located in the Clichy-Batignolles neighborhood in the center of Paris, close to Martin Luther King Park and the courthouse designed by Renzo Piano. Ma Yansong of MAD said: "We have established frequent working workshops with the Paris government, planners and residents, hoping to create a residential project that can be integrated into the community and has creativity and personality."

MAD, in collaboration with French firm Accueil-Biecher Architectes, earlier won an international competition for this project, which is MAD’s first residential design in Europe to be built soon.

Facing the 10-hectare ecological green space "Martin Luther King Park", UNIC enjoys extremely rich community natural resources. The building retreats from low to high, with rich layers, giving people a sense of organic flow and upward growth. MAD hopes to blur the boundary between architecture and nature through variable setbacks, extend the nature of the park to the three-dimensional space of the building, and allow people and nature to communicate and integrate with each other through architecture. UNIC is like multiple stacked courtyards, bringing people and nature closer in the city.

The building is 13 stories high, and residents on the upper floors have views of the Eiffel Tower. UNIC shares a podium with another social housing building, which houses a kindergarten, restaurant, supermarket, and subway station entrance and exit, bringing residents of different social classes closer with innovative spatial forms. The building chose a simple double-tube structure and a fully exposed concrete facade to show its elegant and simple character.

After winning the competition, MAD explored topics such as community sustainable development, resource sharing, energy, and demographic sociology from macro to micro levels, hoping that UNIC and surrounding projects will create an organic and harmonious new Paris community.

On May 20, the mayor of Paris, officials from the Chinese Embassy in France, and Ma Yansong attended the project ribbon-cutting ceremony in Paris. UNIC is expected to be completed in 2018.