Adapting to present times

View PDF

Introducing the theme of giving a new life to existing buildings. In France, and for a long time, the definition of architectural heritage has been correlated to that of historical buildings called "monuments". This definition is much broader today. The entire built environment must be considered as new resources in the saturated territory of cities and suburbs from which we can extract solutions. The built environment has to welcome an increasing number of people and new uses that we cannot foresee yet. Environmental issues and energy resources optimization led to restoration policies which, in most cases, had an impact on the buildings envelope… And on the envelope only. The answer to the problem is incomplete, and the intervention inadequate.

Nowadays, we need to think buildings restructurations as a real tool to transform our built environment. Warehouses, abandoned industrial lands, outdated services buildings or obsolete technical buildings become real opportunities to provide new spaces for living, working, learning, playing…

We are passionate about structural and construction challenges. We address these new topics through a deconstruction/construction process requiring a real expertise and a rooted structural knowledge. Structural features are the starting point of our projects. Relying on structure, an objective component of buildings, helps us to grasp the numerous opportunities it can offer and, quite often, we go further than the stated goals.