Walter Benjamin made the covered passages the symbol of a Parisian way of life, which condensed the essence of modernity. Nearly a hundred years after the start of the monumental collection of texts which would eventually appear, posthumously, in 1982 under the title Paris, capital of the 19th centurye century (The Stag – the German title being Das Passagen-Werk, or “The Book of Passages”), these luminous breakthroughs in Haussmannian hyperdensity are part of folklore. In a city given over to the appetites of luxury giants, some neighborhoods of which look more and more like a shopping center on a special operation day, they are the outdated traces of a mythologized past.
A new form of passages is developing, however, without fanfare, which could well constitute a sign of the present times. These are the cores of the block, these open-air spaces originally designed for the exclusive enjoyment of the occupants of the buildings which border the perimeter. A part is currently being returned, certainly in small amounts but at a regular pace, to the city and its inhabitants.
In the capital, new construction comes up against a wall of constraints: rigid belt of the ring road, bioclimatic PLU which limits the height of buildings to 37 meters, protection of heritage under the supervision of the architects of Bâtiments de France and the commission of Old Paris, hyperactivity of local residents and associations…
The ambition displayed by the Town Hall to increase the share of public housing from 25% to 40% by 2035 is therefore largely based on the transformation of old buildings, with disused offices constituting a resource in this case. particularly valuable. The courtyards and gardens that depend on it are then reconsidered in the light of today’s needs.
Very strong constraints
In the 7e district, the reconversion of the former offices of the Ministry of the Armed Forces into housing was thus designed around the central void that they framed. “We were in the quietest building in Paris: the headquarters of La Grande Muette…explains François Brugel, manager of this project, which he designed in association with the H2O agency, which received the Equerre d’Argent prize in 2023. We wanted to make it a quasi-public place, open as much as possible to the city! »
At their disposal, a beautiful stone building from the 18th centurye century and a concrete building from the 1960s, emblematic of a functionalism radically devoid of affectation. Two buildings which have nothing in common, in other words, except their address, 10, rue Saint-Dominique, and this interior courtyard which unites them. To contain the sports center requested by the program, in addition to the 254 social housing units and the crèche, they chose to build a third in its center.
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