To create an iconic feature of the Parisian metropolis that symbolizes the hand stretched out between the capital and its close suburbs
The esplanade anchors cultural and social uses in this area, today in disuse, and the green roof with its high biodiversity potential completes the green framework of Greater Paris.
The wooden and metal façades come alive with the sliding movement of the façades and the close-up or distant viewpoints of the users.
Project carried out in association with Groupe6.
On the outskirts of Paris, the former non-aedificandi zones are, since the dismantling of the fortifications, places for experimentation and development of modern public policies. Their transformations have always been vectors of social progress but are still too often devalued in the collective Parisian imagination. Through their activation and promotion, our Arena II project today helps to improve the connections between Paris and its inner suburbs, and thus embraces the metropolitan issues of such urban stitches.
As part of the Parisian metropolitan landscape, the Arena is a signal of the urban and ecological transition at work. Neither totemic nor adopting the verticality from another time, it is the horizontality of its vast roof planted with tall trees that signals the entrance to a larger, more inclusive and virtuous Paris.
Simple, perfectly adapted volumes move and levitate above the entrances: they respond to the fluid, tangled and very present lines of the motorway ramps.
The façades are animated by the movement of volumes but also by changes in the perception of materials. Perceived as being made entirely of wood by pedestrians, the building becomes metallic when seen from a distance, from the surrounding buildings and from the higher motorway ramps. The long lines of wood and metal soften the monumentality of the building, creating multiple elusive lines and producing a very dynamic effect.
