360

Rebuilding the City on the City: A Eulogy of Rehabilitation

360 involves rehabilitating three contiguous buildings named after three historic French provinces—Artois, Berry, and Béarn—that reflect the usual flaws of the office buildings and urbanism of the French commercial activity zones of the 1980s—a complex with obsolete equipment, poor energy efficiency, and ill-suited to contemporary uses in both form and operation.

360 nevertheless deserved a reinvention given its remarkable location, at the northern end of the Plateau District in Vanves. With its outstanding unbroken façade running along the Paris ring road, the complex also boasts unobstructed views of Paris and first-tier accessibility, being located between the interchanges of Porte Brancion and Porte de Versailles, and close to the Paris Expo exhibition center and a station on Metro Line 13. 360 reflects PCA-STREAM’s firm belief that there is a certain nobility in carrying out architectural rehabilitation—which amounts to rebuilding the city on the city by radically transforming the image and uses of a building while retaining as much of the existing structure as possible.

The Office of the Future: Open, Versatile, and Conducive to Well-Being

Reinventing this large office complex entails adapting it for the modern workplace. In a change driven by the expectations of a new workforce and further reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic, the workspace paradigm has been turned upside down. Offices have become a forum for exchange and a living social space that places the well-being of employees at the forefront of its concerns.

The reopening of the building is epitomized by the new double-height walk-through lobby and its majestic staircase. The circulations are optimized thanks to the shift from three to two vertical cores, which are largely glazed and set up on the façades, bathed in natural light and offering dual-aspect, north/south-facing floors with stunning vistas.

These new circulations provide high versatility of use, matching various leasing scenarios ranging from several tenants for each story to a single taker per story. A partial “thickening” of the building makes it possible to provide large open and ultra-versatile floor plates. The pursuit of vistas and daylighting strategies led to maximizing the amount of glazing on the façades. To the south, the long balconies and the terraces of the fifth floor enhance the well-being of users, who all have access to planted outdoor spaces. Numerous services complement this attention to employee well-being, with retail outlets at the base of the building, as well as a fitness center and an access to the rooftop, which is redesigned as a proper garden with stunning views across Paris. The rooftop garden is also directly connected to the shared catering area located on the eighth floor, and is open around the clock, offering multiple uses ranging from relaxation, work, and interactions at various levels of informality.

Urban Porosities: Putting an End to the Autarchic Office Complex

360 was designed to break with the logic of functionalist zoning and to fall within a new vibrant form of urban life. Symbolically, the southern façade offers large glazed openings, while the optimization of circulations and the relocation of the reception hall has freed up retail spaces in the building base, providing services that are open not only to the users of the buildings, but also to the residents of the Plateau neighborhood, including a bakery, a salad bar, a bicycle workshop, and a coworking space.

The new southern façade fits the environment to a greater degree than in its previous form, with extensions providing continuity with the building base and greening forming a true vertical landscape. The previous food service area becomes a public space and is landscaped, beautifying the pedestrian pathway by allowing for the creation of a forecourt in front of the building’s entrance. To the north, the parking lot ramps are scaled down in order to free up as much quality public space as possible. Opening the building on its two exposures anticipates the redevelopment of the side lane, as well as the future taming of the Boulevard Périphérique ring road.

Energy Performance and Greening: An Exemplary Environmental Approach

A rehabilitation like that of 360, which was imagined in order to rise to the challenges of the twenty-first century by reinventing a heritage building from the 1980s, had a duty to engage in an ambitious environmental approach. Beyond the rehabilitation itself, which obviates the carbon footprint of a new build in a demolition-reconstruction scenario, the design of the façades was dictated by a concern for aesthetic modernization, and, more importantly, for improved energy performance. Insulation is now provided externally, while the long balconies on the southern façade serve as brise-soleils. This façade treatment is completed by energy-efficient solutions, as well as an incentive-based approach to soft mobilities via the presence of a very large bicycle parking, in conjunction with a repair shop, as well as changing rooms, showers, and lockers.

The greening of all the outdoor areas of the building also allows it to contribute to reconnecting the city to nature. It materializes in the new vertical circulation cores to the north, and, to the south, on the balconies and terraces, and all the way up to the planted rooftop, which features a vegetable patch. The green roof offers cozy and unusual collective spaces, while also producing significant gains in terms of watertightness and thermal inertia while reducing heat island effects, filtering pollutants, and creating habitats that are conducive to biodiversity.

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