Poste du Louvre

Paris, France

Poste du Louvre
Paris, France
2012

program: Total Requalification of “La Poste du Louvre”: postal sorting activities, trans-shipment, company restaurant, office floors, post office, shops, hotel and restaurant, police station, rooms for students, housing and public spaces
> total area: 31 831 m2
> offices: 10 880 m2 SHON
> retail: 2 263 m2 SHON
> residences: 1 155 m2 SHON
> post office directional area: 5 181 m2 SHON
> post office training areas: 979 m2 SHON
> hotel and restaurant: 7 189 m2 SHON
> neighborhood services: 4 184 m2 SHON
client: Poste Immo
project: Alfonso Femia * with Thiérry Algrin and MUTABILIS
structural engineering: Betom Ingénierie
services and environmental engineering: Betom ingénierie, Franck Boutte Consultants (BET HQE)
images: ©Atelier(s) Alfonso Femia & ArteFactory Lab
photos: ©E. Caviola
ceramic model: Danilo Trogu
book: “La Poste du Louvre”
“We approached the building as if we were to approach an Enigma, as discovering a secret.
Although it seems to have been ever-present in the city, this building needed to be revealed: its identity, respect to other natures, other relationships, other intimacies… needed to be strengthened. The time, the space.” AF
Body, Sentiment and Wonder
each major city has buildings which can be described as “heroic” and characterized by their longevity. They have been conceived as ‘machines’, objects or as urban or spatial devices, these buildings persist in our contemprary days and are a way to understand the city. This dimension, that we call ‘heroic’ is rare. We went looking for the body and the soul of the Poste du Louvre in Paris, and attempted to strengthen the dialogue linking one to the other. We approached the building as if we were to approach an Enigma, as discovering a secret.
Although it seems to have been ever-present in the city, this building needed to be revealed: its identity, respect to other natures, other relationships, other intimacies… needed to be strengthened. The time, the space.

A time device, a chronotope project
The project is the opportunity to create a singular chronotope of Grand Paris; a symbiosis between space and time in resonance with contemporary reflections on the capital. A major challenge posed today by the Metropolis: to reconcile the extremes.
We propose a temporal device to these issues, an architecture both pragmatic and poetic.
Thus, the constructed chronotope is structured around an architecture where space and time unfold, defining the bodily experience of places. The architectural project then presents itself as a device through which we may discover the history of this inhabited place and its future. This phenomenological experience gradually thickens beyond any immediate apprehension.

• PROJECT VIDEOS:
> La Poste du Louvre