Beaumarchais, a public housing estate in the Parisian area built in the 80’s, where 240 tenants live. Tensions are mounting over trouble related to its common areas. Questions have arisen in raised tones of voice. Between the utopia of a new way of life (an open living space dreamed up and constructed by two architects twenty years ago) and today’s everyday reality a rhetoric of security has become insidiously imperative pushing people to close up, lock up, become part of the ‘badged’, and shut themselves away for self-protection.