How do you transform and elevate a large bank into housing? It is possible to reconnect this object with the city while preserving the outline of the slabs that is offered to us because: ‘First of all, it will be necessary to consider everything that is “already there” with great care and attention. In fact, the grey energy already embodied in the existing building is an asset on which the project can largely build. The mirror façades, which are not very compatible with housing, create 3 solid, impermeable and apparently opaque blocks. However, their preciousness and the grey energy they contain force us to think twice before throwing everything away in an irrepressible desire for novelty. The concept of the façade is to excavate what already exists and reuse the elements removed from the existing floors by raising them. As in the Jenga game, the blocks are heightened by hollowing them out, redistributing the parts in place, without adding any external parts. The resulting object responds better to the Honegger bars thanks to the new template obtained and its new porosity. In this way, a layer is created in the façade, allowing balconies to act as noise traps. We are moving from a bank to housing, playing with the result of this upward lightening operation. The object captures the context in its mirrored bands, while revealing the new transparency of the inhabited floors. The glazing tilted to one side becomes the new slab edges of the elevation, while the existing slab edge glazing is all retained.
On the other hand, the existing stairwells, which were oversized and poorly distributed in the plan, have been abandoned. The project proposes 11 new stairwells, optimised and better distributed. They also become the seismic reinforcement pillars of the project. The T-shaped structure of the stairwells and the walls between flats carry the new floors, which do not rest on the existing ones. This saves on structural reinforcement and shoring. Investment is concentrated on the new, perfectly dimensioned layouts around the communal lobbies.
