Located alongside the Bois de Boulogne where landscape blends with built heritage, the building seems to overhang a back garden while maintaining a firm stance onto the street. Not merely for pleasure, the garden is a central element of the building’s relationship to its environment, marked by the strong presence of greenery in the neighborhood.

Our project for the building extension literally opens the ground with a large patio which makes it possible to exploit the spatial potential of the building’s existing basement. The first basement level therefore benefits from natural light and collective usage. Thus paradoxically, part of the requested supplementary usable surface area already exists; our project merely activates and reveals it by striving to use the building’s existing capacities to their best advantage. This also allows for a narrower extension distributed more evenly along the façade. It colonizes the existing structure by touches, fitting into the hollows and empty spaces left by the building.

The façade along Boulevard Bruix catalyzes several of the project’s ambitions. The original frame is highlighted by a system of pivoting panels, allowing the façade to constantly vibrate along the boulevard. The façade of the extension is designed as a sheet of glass and steel that folds and unfolds in keeping with the uses it creates.