Îlot Saint-Germain
Architectures and pre-existences
The project falls into the particular context of the transfer of the Ministry of the Armed Forces to the Balard site. The freeing of office space permitted the creation of a large operation on a site comprising buildings built over different time periods. This group of buildings forms the îlot Saint- Germain.
The Hôtel de Brienne and the « gardens building » remain in the hands of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, while the buildings giving onto Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue de l’Université were sold to a property developer. The buildings giving onto Rue Saint-Dominique and the one lying in the heart of the plot (building 200) were sold to RIVP (Régie Immobilière de la Ville de Paris). One of the main challenges facing this operation is therefore the cohabitation with the neighbourhood: a project that needs to play an important role in an anonymous setting that brings together 254 housing units, a gymnasium and a kindergarten.
With each participant taking charge of a part of the operation under the coordination of François Brugel, Architectes Associés – with h2o architects working on the buildings giving onto the street, FBAA lying in the heart of the plot with « bâtiment 200 », Élise & Martin Hennebicque working on the landscaping and Antoine Regnault on amenities, we were able to jointly give thought to the appearance of the materials, the ways in which they wear and what they evoke in the collective imagination, linked to a search for restraint and simplicity. This questioning allowed us to test and evolve together.
We answered questions linked to housing, social surrounds, practices, as well as the urban and architectural heritage. In this project, we have also approached rehabilitation from two different directions, one technical and the other rational.
In answer to the programmatic density, the site’s complex geometry and the fragmented nature of the programmatic interlocking forming the basis of the competition, we tried to find a simple solution able to incorporate the 254 housing units, the kindergarten, the gymnasium and the garden.
Reaching beyond the patrimonial aspect, our thinking turned towards heritages and the long term. Our convictions aimed the solution towards a project seeking to connect to a form of urbanity specific to the setting. The grafts, amputations and redistributions placed themselves at the service of a project that sought to develop an entanglement of scales. The materiality reveals the first signs of life, occupation and the passing of time. The physicality of architecture should be able to age in a dignified manner. The existing stone envelope is an advantage. As from this stone, which can be found in different forms, the different types of usage allowed choices to be associated (wood, concrete and glass) with clear rules. In response to the initial minerality, plants and trees find their place in a new founding landscape spread over two ground levels.
While it might be worth discussing flexibility and systems, in reality it would be worthwhile discussing an architecture able to serve.
Housing: the « right layout » and good usages
Aware of the fact that volumetric and distributive data should not become constraints in the interior organisation of the housing, the latter was designed in accordance with a logic based on construction intervals, existing openings and façade orientations. The proposed housing is the fruit of experience in the construction of housing accompanied by research into a theme based on a simple but vital question: what makes good housing?
Good housing adapts to the location where it is to be found. Above all, it must be bright and comfortable, at the pinnacle of what its immediate environment permits. This is why we have designed housing that, as far as possible, integrates the façade space. Good housing should also be efficient and adapted to contemporary lifestyles. We know little about the future occupants and consequently leave it up to them to develop their own particular living environments. Good housing also includes adaptation spaces. What particularly interests us is the varied usages offer made possible by architectural elements designed in a way that goes beyond a single functionality: volumes that simultaneously incorporate furniture, a kitchenette, a library or storage area, etc.
Without being exhaustive, the right layouts tend to be arranged around the theme of a flexible layout and an undifferentiated plan. This is characterised by a tendency to produce rooms without corridors. While respecting the possible day/night possibilities, this type of plan layout answers the need for changing standards alongside a lifestyle marked by family grouping rituals. This way of thinking about housing allows us to imagine accommodation that can adapt to all situations and, in the short term, control all possibilities. This typology is well adapted to transformation and evolution: inhabit and « re-inhabit ». It can take the form of redistributions or extensions or, on the contrary, reductions attained by housing subdivisions. Consequently, the plan layout and façade address the potential evolution of the housing that now finds itself lying in the heart of the transformation made possible by contemporary lifestyles. This type of layout is possible in a building where the floor levels are free from loadbearing structures and with verticalities as the only intangible points.
Relationship to light
We felt it important to seek out the greatest porosities for the greatest number of housing units. For reasons of comfort and ventilation, the dual aspect housing units permit the opening of the facing windows. The corner housing unit is a strong figure that calls for particular care and attention. While the housing units all seek the dual aspect called for by the site, the corner housing units benefit from conditions specific to the plot. Consequently, they are specific while the other units seek a generic dimension. They represent the third way of living offered by our approach. Making use of the corner is a way of increasing light and extending the housing unit.
From our point of view, the loggias to the south and west of building 200 complete a structuring element of the project that redefines and transforms an office building into a housing block. They meet the expectations and the challenges of contemporary housing, being those governing the relationship with the outdoor space. It is important to be concerned by the form taken by this space, its capacity to develop, to hide, permit or prevent. All domestic activities (resting, eating, storing, reading, working, picking and planting, etc.) are assumed: imagine this space as an extension to the garden, the balcony, the loggia, or terrace, representing the idea of the outdoor room. This distancing principle generally serves the surveying of the project, reinforcing the operational character of the principle, offering a facet that is both collective and individual. The outdoor room, particularly needed to the south and west, positions the housing in its relationship to the outside environment.
Rehabilitation: using the building’s inherent qualities
The conservation of existing structures was the project’s high point. In buildings 10-100, the loadbearing stone masonry façades have been repaired and the wooden floors reinforced. The restored decorative elements as well as the proportions of the interior volumes favour the architectural quality of the housing units. The post-beam-concrete structure of building 200 has been conserved and the joist-hollow block floors renovated.
Depending on the level of damage, the stones and façades were cleaned, consolidated or restored using plugs or replaced by the same type of new stone. They were insulated using mineral wool thermal insulation applied from the inside. The steel metalwork was subject to the continuous reinforcement of the existing membering.
Great care was taken for the housing units considered to be of a lesser quality. Located on ground floor level and in the roof spaces, they provide a particularly attractive housing offer.
If an 18th century Parisian building (illustrated by groups 10 and 100) constructed as an investment property or an out-building has a façade that can be read and used as a housing façade, then building 200, built right in the middle of the functionalist period, is an office building and imagined as such. It is true that the façade is somewhat severe from several points of view: in the reading of the building’s use (office building with tall frames), its rationality (a window not appropriate for use by an inhabitant), its height (if one takes the plot and neighbouring façades into consideration) and its strict repetition, without openings or any particular style. However, this façade has qualities that are inherent to the building, qualities that can be used within the framework of our approach.
The project’s texture and materials: stone
The first of these qualities is the stone, its colour, materiality, durability, and the way it echoes the old facing façades. This salient feature provides the starting point. The second quality, invisible to the naked eye, is its constructive and spatial structure. It is a gridded framework hidden behind a « massive » outer wall. Because the frames are not loadbearing and assembled by infills, they can be inexpensively modified.
The initial hypothesis we assert is the modification of the façades on the basis of use. The aim is to think of views, be they from a seated or standing position and for young people or adults. The intention is to imagine the way in which to open or clean a frame, in function of the use of the opening. In addition, it is necessary to think of the quality of the light illuminating a room in accordance, for example, with its orientation. We will subsequently enter the premises but, as it stands, it is much like the reading of a long list with an examination of thicknesses and arches, frames as a usage space, loggias with the projection of uses from an interior through to an outdoor space, a double height used to mark singular spaces or a different nature, a hall, etc.
Technically, this is a fairly simple matter. The openings were prepared by an initial sawing in order to preserve the stone transoms and lintels. We then used added elements to recreate the missing stone parts. The wooden oak frames and reveals complete the work. To the south, the creation of a reinforced concrete double skin cast in situ and with a hammered finish, offers a more generous housing that matches outdoor needs. Insulation is provided by internally applied mineral wool. The balconies are defined by champagne-coloured lacquered steel balustrades.
The îlot Saint-Germain amenities
An integral part of the îlot Saint-Germain restructuring exercise, this innovative gymnasium-garden project provides a simple architectural resolution to a complex situation. It slides a group of 254 rehabilitated housing units into the heart of the plot. The emergence of the gymnasium, a refined and « anonymous » volume, simply expresses the thickness of the garden where it is to be found. The garden itself is positioned on the gymnasium’s glazed fascia.
Access to the hanging garden is either by ramp or staircase. The ramp represents the main pathway and is the garden’s threshold. It offers a spatial sequence that introduces a distance between the garden and the ground floor. This garden is now felt to be a preserved place in which the long rhythm of the seasons replaces the rhythm of urban life.
The gymnasium’s volumetric simplicity has been extended through to the base of the existing building. Only concrete screen walls are used to enliven and mark out a white volume to naturally light the programmatic entities that it conceals: children’s playground, the winter gardens for the housing units and the overhead lighting of the dance hall. Finally, a planted patio interlinks these elements, enriching the visual relations it creates.
CREDITS
Housing
FBAA, François Brugel Architectes Associés, Delegated representative and coordinator François Brugel, Victor de Almeida, Clothilde Dolz, Jean Bellon, Marion Dufat, Augustin Tollet
h2o architectes, Associates
Jean-Jacques Hubert, Antoine Santiard, Barthélémi Zha, Adélaïde Breuvart, Nestor Ivanov, Clément Dauvilliers, Lucie Rossignol
ALTEREA (consulting engineers, all trades)
Élise & Martin Hennebicque Landscape designers (landscaping)
Sports amenities, kindergarten and garden
Antoine Regnault Architecture, representative Antoine Regnault, Eloka Som, Olivier Busson
Élise & Martin Hennebicque Paysagistes-concepteurs (landscaping)
EVP (structures), Inex (services & high environmental quality), Axio (surveyor), Point d’orgue (acoustics engineer), PK Ingénierie (mass catering), Acces (work safety)
