Transforming a vehicular infrastructure into a hybrid social space, expanding the public space of the city center.
Located on boulevard Carnot, in place of the former Peugeot dealership, a little over 80 years after its creation, GARAGE is taking over and undergoing a unique renovation.
This place dedicated to commerce and innovation in the heart of Lille is marked by three strong axes: preserving the soul of the building, bringing it into line with the times and the people, and allowing for a great deal of modularity of the spaces.
In line with this vision, the structural elements of the building have been preserved, such as the original rough concrete columns or the access ramp leading to the basement. The choice was made to limit the number of fixed partitions and to leave all the ducts, cables and other system networks visible.
Particular attention was also paid to the choice of materials, between resin with a raw concrete look for the floors and wood for the furniture. The result is an ensemble that reveals the structure of the building and preserves the identity of its industrial past.
Another key element of the building, the entirely glazed street facade, 30 meters long and 8 meters high, opens GARAGE to the Boulevard Carnot and its immediate environment.
The architectural approach is to keep a generous transparent surface in a contemporary spirit. In keeping with the original grid and in reference to the workshop facades, the openings in the facade are made up of clear glass walls, framed by anthracite grey steel joinery, taking up the colorimetric theme of the existing building.
The historical building
The Garage Peugeot was a 4-story building that opened in 1938. In its composition, horizontality dominated the facade through horizontal bands of aluminum that underlined each level.
These levels were made up of a curtain wall which, located on the inside of the façade, reinforced the reading of the bands. In addition, a regular grid offered a verticality to the openings of the building. A balance between horizontality and verticality is achieved in a rational and modernist writing in its time.
Since 1938, the Peugeot garage has undergone transformations, finally offering the image of a completely different façade. The horizontal bands remain pronounced at each level, but are now composed of a beige reconstituted stone cladding. The vertical grid is also retained, but recut horizontally, which has the effect of removing the original window slant. Finally, the volume of the upper floor is shortened.
During a restructuring in the 1990s, the Peugeot activity was reduced: third to fifth floors were transformed into offices, the second into a parking lot and part of the first and ground floor into commercial space. The Peugeot dealership and the workshop became concentrated on a part of the ground floor and the first floor.
The new project proposed to respect the history of the place while offering a contemporary facade, in concordance with the proposed public program.
A return to the original design allows the project to gain interior space by reducing the slanted area on the first floor and by offering continuity to the façade. This provides continuity to the public space and is consistent with the guidelines of the Boulevard Carnot redevelopment.
This new façade has the appearance of a large window, which, by its materiality, reflects the image of a precious object.
The vitrine, a window on the city
The address being known by all for its street front, this became a major component of the intervention.
We chose to design a facade composed of large, slender, totally transparent glass walls, in reference to former studio workshop facades. It floods the interior space with natural light, creating a link with the exterior and promoting the social and commercial activity of the GARAGE. To materialize this idea, we imagined, in replacement of the existing facade, a large full height opening, very wide, which invites the public to enter the place.
The opening is created by an accordion glass door, seven meters high, which slides laterally from the left side of the facade to open it up to twelve meters wide facing the city. The parabola of the engine room becomes tangible, physical and transforms the arrival of the visitor into an experience and the building into an urban landmark.
This monumental and unusual installation presents a unique challenge in terms of development and execution: the motorized door follows a complex kinematics, guided by a network of successive rails in the ceiling.
The weight of the glazed doors represents up to 10 tons in the open position. The whole structure is suspended from the existing structure, braced and precisely dimensioned so as not to jeopardize the integrity of the existing structural system.
Team:
Project Owner: SAS Garage
Architects: Coldefy
Space Planning: Tétris
Project Team: Thomas Coldefy, Isabel Van Haute, Zoltan Neville, Simon Ducreu, Apameh Seyed, Jerica Puterle, Sahar Safieddine
Photographer: Florent Michel
