Paris, France

Monumental staircase at the French National Assembly

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Answering a public call for nominations at the end of 2008 for the construction of a monumental staircase within the French National Assembly, we were chosen. A few months later began a singular building project in an historical place with the contingency of a such strategical site. Today we unveil a building within the building, contemporary as well as respectful reinterpretating architectural and decorative elements of an emblematic place of the French Republic.

site

It’s nearly impossible to ingenuously move into in a such historical and symbolic building, one needs to make a stand; numerous are the architects who already took position. We didn’t want to think the staircase as an isolated piece of architecture, we instantly thought we had to conceive it today with our own sensitivity.

We imagined this staircase as a new stage of Palais Bourbon’s life which had known quite a lot before this one and would know so many of them in the future decades. Then we walked through the whole building and scanned it carefully, thoroughly observing all of its components and trying to get a comprehensive understanding of its symbolic logic. It’s only once we had finished this work that we initiated design.

program

It’s mainly thanks to the constant dialogue we had with the client, the Service des Affaires Immobilières et du Patrimoine de l’Assemblée Nationale (French National Assembly Real Estate Service), that the project naturally grew up. Our youth was known, our relative experience too; still our client had chosen us because it felt happy with the ideas and envies we had expressed, they matched its own desires. We had decided to ask the help of a strongly experienced engineer office whom presence to our side could be felt as a guarantee for the final result.

The client needed to create a vertical circulation in order to connect the seven levels of the existing Palais Bourbon currently irrigated by several elevators. The place where the staircase should be built had been chosen with extra care, replacing partially an existing one, at least as far as sublevels were concerned. But still it was all about demolishing walls and floors to create an all new staircase from ground zero.

These stairs were meant to be used in case of fire and we had to make them compliant with safety standards. This peculiar aspect of the program made us think of all means we could use to integrate all needed equipments as much as possible resulting in a quite stealthy result.

The construction management has been slightly sensitive as the building remained occupied. Making the most of the short summer parliamentary break, we had to deal with a complex and ever changing schedule. We hadn’t much time and that’s why we had to be the most responsive we could, being there on a nearly daily basis and taking important decisions on site; our engineer helped us a lot in that matter.

Model

realization

In the middle of Germanic, Scandinavian and Japanese influences, our sensitivity led us to draw these stairs as a whole objet, unfolding into space like a giant origami within existing walls without even touching them. As sharp as a knife this dark « monoxyle » develops itself into the Palais Bourbon and takes many shapes: marches, countermarches, silt, floors, panels, in a single movement. It walks with people and makes sure it will be visible by wanderers.

Attentive to the most insignificant detail, we thoroughly studied every single assembly of the stairs to be able to lead the workers during the building process, making us capable of delivering the most coherent project we could. Quite present on the site, we managed to take decisions quickly and this is the least we could do in a such estate restoration project.

Naturally close to ecological standards, we promoted environmental low impact materials. In addition to the concrete structure, an especially low energy choice, we used woods, parquets and panels responding to the most restrictive European standards, PEFC and FSC to be named. Painting are also eco-friendly whereas all luminaries are equipped with LED and compact fluorescent lamps assisted by presence detectors.

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Monumental staircase at the French National Assembly