Parisian studio Calq has transformed a 1970s office tower into a new model of co-living and working, without any major changes to its structure or its unique precast facade
You’ve seen the Standard in London – now meet Pong of Paris. Designed by Parisian studio Calq, this adaptive reuse project in the city’s 15th arondissement – between the guiding stars of the Eiffel and Montparnasse towers – carries clear echoes of Orms’ groundbreaking London hotel (CQ 270). Both were designed in the early 1970s as cellular offices, one for Camden council, the other for social housing provider ADOMA. Both have distinctive rhythmic facades of profiled windows, based on a repeated precast concrete module. And both have now been granted unlikely second lives after years of decline.
Where they differ is in the nature of their new incarnations. Rather than a hotel, Pong offers a hybrid of co-living accommodation and co-working, with a public sports hall and community centre at ground and basement level. The different functions follow the outline of the original 14-storey structure. Above the glazed ground floor of public spaces, the offices are contained in a three-storey podium. This is followed by another office level, which is inset and glazed, visually separating the eight apartment storeys above.
The architects have kept as much of the original structure as possible. Nearly 90% of the in-situ concrete frame was preserved, with demolition limited to cutting openings for staircases in the duplex apartments, removing much of the level-one slab to create a double-height base, and redesigning the central core to house all vertical service runs, stairs and three lifts. The concrete has been exposed throughout, acting as a common thread between the different programmes. “It offers users a memory of the place, its history, a trace of the past,” say Calq.
The offices, which have been delivered open plan, are notably raw in aesthetic. Columns still show traces of plaster, chisel marks and workmen’s scrawls, while all services run along the bare soffits, maximising ceiling heights. In the apartments, some surfaces have been softened with a Keim mineral wash, and the horizontal services are divided between the soffit and upstand beams, where they are concealed behind in-built benches and storage.
The facade has been entirely preserved, with insulation added internally. Rather than returning the concrete panels to their original blue colour, they have been cleaned using an abrasive pressure system, lightening the tone. This has helped to preserve the building’s strong identity, the architects say, by accentuating the shadows cast by the projecting window profiles.
The windows themselves have been removed and replaced with thermally efficient glazing. High-performance aluminium joinery has increased the glazed area by 120mm in height and 200mm in width, drawing in more natural light and expanding views out. In all, 800 new window units have been installed.
Pong is claimed to be the largest co-living development in France. Each of the eight duplex apartments has 12 bedrooms, ranging in size from 16 to 32m2, arranged around a communal living area. Reinforced floors and acoustic partitions have been added between bedrooms, which are all en-suite with customised furniture. Some also include a kitchenette. Thirty per cent of rooms are classified as “intermediate housing”, with reductions on market rent.
A key intervention has been the addition of double-height loggias, which open out from the communal living area in every duplex. Here the windows have been removed from the precast units and the floor raised to accommodate 100mm of rigid polyurethane insulation. The thermal line has been moved back to a full-height aluminium sliding frame, 1.2m inside the building perimeter, allowing each flat to have a semi-outdoor space. The floorplan has been devised so that the duplexes rotate through 90 degrees, allowing the loggias to move from one corner to the next as the building rises.
In addition to the loggias, residents have a rooftop garden, while office workers can enjoy a large fourth-floor terrace on top of the podium. In all, the development incorporates 2,000sq m of planting, including public areas surrounding the entrance level on all sides. The architects envisage these green spaces merging with the public activities on the lower floors, establishing new connections between the building and the city.