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In answer to the programmatic density, the site’s geometry and the fragmented nature of the programmatic interlocking forming the basis of the competition, we tried to find a simple solution to incorporate the 254 housing units, a gymnasium and a nursery care (those two were designed by Antoine Regnault architecture). Reaching beyond the patrimonial aspect, our thinking turned towards heritages and long term. Our convictions led to a project seeking to connect with 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. Through this project, we answered questions linked to housing, social surroundings, practices, as well as the urban and architectural heritage.
By preserving the principal features of the buildings forming the the îlot Saint-Germain, the project ensures the continuity with its surroundings and perpetuates its heritage. After the move of a part of the offices of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, two buildings remain in their hands. One of the main challenges facing this operation is therefore the cohabitation with the neighborhood: a project that needs to play an important role in an anonymous setting that brings together 254 housing units a new garden and its amenities. The transformation of the site favors connections between the inside and the outside, the new inhabitants of the îlot-Saint-Germain and their neighbors.
The conservation of existing structures was the project’s high point. In buildings 10-100, the loadbearing stone masonry facades have been repaired and the wooden floors reinforced. The post-beam-concrete structure of building 200 has been conserved and the joist-hollow block floors renovated. The existing stone envelope is an advantage, its colour, materiality, durability. As from it, the uses allowed choices to be associated with, following clear rules (wood, concrete and glass) adding a layer on a palimpsest. While it might be worth discussing transformation and reuse, it would be worthwhile discussing about architecture able to serve through years. FBAA and h2o, were awarded the « Équerre d’Argent 2023 », France’s most prestigious architecture prize, for their housing project.
Everything began with the move of the offices of a part of the Ministry of the Armed Forces from the îlot Saint-Germain which is composed by buildings from different time periods. The project aimed to create 254 social housing units into two buildings. One, is an 18th century Parisian building, giving onto the street (n° 10 and 100). The other, an office building, lying in the heart of the plot, built in 1960 (n° 200).
The rehabilitation and transformation have been approached from two different directions, one technical and the other rational. The proposed housing is the result of research and experiences that seek to define what a good housing must offer: brightness, flexibility, openness onto its immediate environment, efficiency, flexibility and adaptability to contemporary ways of life: inhabit and ‘‘re-inhabit’’. In the buildings 10 and 100, decorative elements and the proportions of the interior volumes have been restored to improve the architectural quality of the apartments. Those considered to be of lesser quality (first floor, attic) are treated with particular care to enhance their comfort. With the creation of a concrete double-skin on the south and west facades of building 200, we provided the housings with exterior spaces and achieved to requalify the former office building into housing block. All domestic activities are assumed: imagine this space as an extension to the garden, loggia, or terrace, representing the idea of the outdoor room.
The transformation of the former offices of the Ministry of the Armed Forces in social housing, nursery care, gymnasium and garden, make of the îlot Saint-Germain a successful example of urban renovation. 254 new social housing units have been created in the heart of the 7th arrondissment of Paris. (…) and gave the opportunity to transform an office building completed during the 50’s, in a newly high-qualitiy housing units, giving outdoors spaces and balcony to all the inhabitants.
FBAA office is mainly focuses on the questions about the evolution of the city and its buildings over the long term, its amenities and its housing more specifically. The city, is rich in traces, successive layers, erasures, recoveries that make of it a palimpsest. The transformations it undergoes modify these layers as much as its substance and this, irreversibly. It’s finally, for us architects, a source of information that we must understand, rethink, manipulate and order.
h2o architectes is an architectural, patrimonial and urban, creation and reprogramming office. Facing the complexity of the contexts studied, the members of the office have built an agile approach, able to solving each situation in a singular way through consultation. The projects are conceived in an open way, in a dialogue with the history of the places, systematically re-examined and always enriched. More than spaces, h2o architects builds places that are practiced and lived.
