The existence of two buildings from different periods on the Bons Enfants site serves as the basis for a new intervention. Culture remains inextricably linked to the notion of heritage. I began my design by reassessing the building’s layers, re-evaluating their depths, refashioning the contours of the roof pitches and eliminating everything that protruded for no apparent reason beyond a valid line. It was primarily a matter of redefining distribution within the project of the existing buildings’ outer skin. The stainless steel latticework covers in their entirety the facades located on the periphery of the island site. It is the contour of a classic opus, which is deformed and deformed to the point where no trace of its origin remains. Light, safety, function, perception, leitmotif and technique succeed one another in the development process like operational forces altering the geometry, the density or the contours of the design. Software applications helped us to display all the deformations very quickly and take the right decisions. Slender and continuous in appearance, the latticework shimmers in the light or absorbs it, depending on the angle of incidence, and leads the grey of the Paris sky down to the ground.

Francis Soler