Paris Porte Pouchet Sports Facility
The Porte Pouchet project is part of a large-scale urban redevelopment begun in 2003 to redefine Paris’ city gates. It aims to revive local life and create new links between Paris and the neighbouring towns of Clichy and Saint Ouen.
The site, which was home to a vehicle pound and a municipal garage, has been transformed over an area of nearly 15 hectares thanks to a neighbourhood- wide scheme and the landscaping of large public spaces. The sports facility designed by DREAM beneath the périphérique ring road participates in the new attractiveness of this previously neglected area.
The sports facility is based on the temporary occupation of public space for private use over a period of 10 years. It is managed by Five, a fervent advocate of inclusive, inner-city sport. Flexible and adapted to city life, the centre is open from 9am to midnight, and already attracts a broad public: children and adults, schools and clubs, such as girls’ football club Graines de Footballeuses.
In June it will be joined by new events space Bonjour/ Bonsoir, with bar, food-truck, after-work events, sports evenings and club.
For this unusual site, inaccessible by cranes, we decided on prefabricated timber frame panels and a dovetail frame assembly, enabling rapid unloading and assembly.
The practice’s flagship material, timber is used for the structure (walls and roof) and facade: spruce for the framework, larch for the latticework cladding, bringing a warmth to this concrete environment.
The grid pattern of the facade is inspired by the mesh of a football net, a nod to the new pitches, whose metallic structures have been unified by shades of green in order to blend into the surrounding green spaces.
Former professional basketball player and founding architect of DREAM, Dimitri Roussel is particularly attached to the role of sport in architecture and the identity of a city.
In 2017, he completed the renovation of the football pitch where Kylian Mbappé trained as a child in Bondy. A small-sized project, yet one that is transcended by its symbolic significance.
At Porte Pouchet, sport has participated in regenerating the neglected urban space, giving new vitality to the former landscape scarred by the ring road.
For the 2024 Games in Paris, the practice is continuing its sports adventures with the completion of an office building crowned with a sports facility on the top floor, open to the public and offering views over the Parisian landscape.
