Located between Parc du Pré Ruffier, Champberton and Avenue Potie, and crossed by Rue du 8 mai 1945, Quartier Renaudie takes its name from Jean Renaudie (1925 - 1981), the architect-urban planner who oversaw the district's construction. In 1974, he designed a new town center for the fragmented commune of Saint Martin d'Hères, and developed the first district of this future urbanization, integrating 447 housing units, offices, shops and a school. The project was taken over and brought to fruition by Serge Renaudie after Jean Renaudie's death in 1981.

Convinced of the need for architectural diversity to reflect human diversity, Jean Renaudie wanted to design a neighborhood where all housing would be different. Above a "plateau" of above-ground parking lots (impossible to bury due to the outcropping of hard geological strata), buildings rise and flourish in contact with wide planted terraces, forming veritable artificial "hills" masking the parking lots at their heart. With a very "topographical" eye, the architect multiplies the number of terraces and viewpoints, as well as the circus-like layouts and "gorge-like" pedestrian walkways that allow access to the buildings from all sides, creating a vast meeting space between the public and the private spaces of the residential terraces.

On either side of a central street lined with large arcades and pedestrian squares - balancing circulation between pedestrians and cars - the various groups of single-family homes structured on a triangular grid (the architect's trademark) innovate in their forms (acute angles, cylinders, curves) by integrating internal patio organizations. Designed to be ubiquitous, vegetation is planted in successive tubs of gardens invading roofs and facades.

A further 271 homes were planned for a second phase (1984), but never built.