OVERHANGING THE TRACKS

Baumschlager Eberle and Scape’s new and thoroughly environmentally friendly office building in Paris looks as if it is about to take a plunge into the railway yard of Batignolles. Its three wings offer unusual workspaces and breath-taking views of the city, including the Eiffel Tower

RUE MSTISLAV-ROSTROPOVITCH IN PARIS DID NOT EXIST UP UNTIL TWO YEARS AGO. In its place there was an enormous marshalling yard. Today around this new street in the north-west of the city, which has Renzo Piano’s ethereal courthouse as its backdrop, extends Clichy-Batignolles, a so-called eco-district where apartments sell for 12,000 euros a square metre in buildings designed by some big French and foreign names, such as Périphérique, Francis Soler, Lan Architects, MAD, Aires Mateus and others. On the one hand there are residences with ample balconies that enjoy views of Martin Luther King Park (see Abitare no. 579); on the other, facing onto a busy railway yard, we find highly energy-efficient office buildings. Among the most curious of these is the “cappuccino-coloured” building conceived by German firm Baumschlager Eberle and Italo-French studio Scape. As Scape’s proprietor Ludovica Di Falco explains: “Our lot is peculiar because it is not set on

the ground but on a concrete platform, a sort of bridge that ‘flies’ over the tracks.” In order to obtain the over 17,000 square metres of useable floor area laid out on seven storeys without imposing too much of a burden on this elevated pedestal, the designers have opted for a structure built almost entirely of wood, which has only a third of the weight of concrete. “It is not wood-washing,” jokes the architect. “But this choice of structure has also proved interesting from the viewpoint of environmental sustainability, as it means 2,900 tonnes less CO in the atmosphere.” In addition, to

2 avoid the dispersion of heat typical of the classic glass box for offices, only 37% of the façades consist of windows, “cut out” of a solid shell of aluminium sandwich. But to explain the positive energy balance of the building – it produces 23% more than it needs for its operation – we also need to look at the 2,000 square metres of photovoltaic panels on the roof and the shrewd orientation. In fact the volume is not a typical parallelepiped but a sort of trefoil that also incorporates a garden and is designed to take advantage of the exposure to the sun as well as provide openings onto the

city, underlined on the façade by two double-height loggias (one frames the Eiffel Tower, the other the Sacré-Coeur). As the architect points out: “This unusual trilobate form also makes it possible to organize the internal spaces of the offices in a way that is both more functional and pleasant, with dynamic views of the city.” Clichy-Batignolles, which covers an area of 50 hectares, is just one of Paris’s big construction sites at the moment. Di Falco states that: “The one in Paris Rive Gauche is even larger than this, but there are at least ten others currently underway, on various scales. And there is Grand Paris, the plan drawn up at the behest of Nicolas Sarkozy and continued by successive governments, which envisages filling the gaps between the centre and the suburbs by 2030 and then expanding the city as far as the new edge marked by the Grand Paris Express, the future automated circular rapid transit line that is intended to link up the main arteries connecting the metropolis to its hinterland.” The Scape studio will design one of the 68 new stations on this ring, which will generate much work for architects and constructors. For Di Falco, in conclusion: “There’s a lot to do and in France the building industry is governed by a rigid but efficient framework. It is no coincidence that major international firms like Snøhetta and MVRDV have just opened branches in Paris.” ○