Nestled atop a hill and adjacent to the Hautes Bruyères park, the Gustave Roussy Institute now has a new scientific hub dedicated to cancer research, designed by Baumschlager Eberle Architectes in collaboration with studio SAME Architectes, the associate architect.

The nearby A6 motorway, which links Paris to Lyon, opens up the skyline and offers a unique panoramic view over the capital: a prime location for both seeing and being seen. The incubator forms part of a mixed-use development zone (ZAC Grand Parc), a new neighbourhood designed by the TVK practice, offering an elegant urban layout where the streets are all framed by architecture that, as the storeys rise, breaks up into distinct volumes.

Adaptability for today and tomorrow

For architects, the concept of a programme is, in many ways, open to debate: whilst a building may be designed to meet a specific requirement, it must ultimately be capable of adapting to other uses. This project is, in this regard, a textbook example. An initial project, decided upon before the 2020 health crisis, had originally been designed to accommodate offices only. A new investor opted for a second approach – offices and research laboratories – without any major impact on the project’s layout or structural design. Only the ceiling heights were increased.

The key challenge of the project is to provide workspaces that can be used either as offices or as laboratories. The operator’s use of shortterm leases – sometimes as short as one month – requires that the spaces be almost immediately reversible. Thus, the building, designed around a simple primary structure combining concrete columns and slabs, could in future accommodate a wide range of uses without the need for major restructuring of the whole complex: housing, a municipal library, a school…

Flexibility, Innovation and Technical Performance

The requirements of the Kadans Science Partner programme called for a high degree of space reversibility, with the aim that 80 per cent of the floor area could be converted equally easily into offices or laboratories over the building’s lifetime. This requirement had a significant influence on the technical choices made for the project. To enable these changes without major works, the floor plans are designed around a dual-supply system for utilities, separating tertiary uses from scientific ones. A specific network is dedicated to the laboratories and a second to the offices, ensuring that the required sanitary and technical conditions are maintained whilst avoiding any risk of cross-contamination when the use of the space changes.

This high degree of flexibility directly benefits the Innovation Centre, designed to accommodate a wide range of organisations of varying sizes and stages of development, from fledgling start-ups to more established biotechnology companies. The laboratories are primarily BSL-1 and BSL-2 grade, with the option to upgrade to BSL-3 configurations as part of fit-out work carried out by the tenants. The facilities are sized to meet the requirements of life sciences research, with an air change rate of 6 volumes per hour. The fume cupboards, meanwhile, have extraction capacities of up to 1,000 volumes per hour, enabling the handling of sensitive products and samples under optimal safety conditions. The diversity of the spaces available is another factor contributing to the project’s appeal. With the smallest available rental unit being a laboratory workbench, it is easy to host and develop innovative start-ups.

To support this flexibility and ensure the site’s operational continuity, each building has an entire floor dedicated to technical equipment. This optimises the distribution of services and facilitates both maintenance and future adaptations of the spaces. The air-handling systems feature separate air-handling units for office and laboratory activities, reflecting their different requirements. This redundancy enhances the building’s resilience and ensures its technical performance over the long term.

Structure and façade: striking the right balance

This long-term approach to architecture has, however, been adapted to the project’s geographical and urban context: the presence of the Grand Paris Express and Line 14 running underground necessitates structural reinforcement to minimise vibrations. No laboratory could tolerate even the slightest movement. The floor slabs are therefore thicker in order to support heavier operational loads, amounting to 500 kg/m² compared with an average of just 250 kg/m² for offices. As for the façade, it is designed to be an environmentally efficient system. Its thickness of 65 cm – a balance struck between the project’s energy performance and financial viability – ensures good thermal insulation and excellent acoustic performance. Furthermore, it provides effective solar protection as the glazing is set back from the façade. The choice of solid, French-made bricks for the façade meets the project’s requirements for solidity, thermal mass and insulation. Their particularly meticulous installation, combining dry vertical joints with recessed horizontal joints, serves to highlight each course of bricks and lend the project a human scale.

A free-form urban sculpture

25,000 m² of office space and laboratories may, at first glance, seem imposing. Whilst the site brief called for the building to follow the street lines and incorporate varying heights, it was ultimately decided to sculpt the mass to open up views towards the city. Furthermore, this manipulation of the volume results in a multitude of angles, allowing for dual or even triple orientations, which provide the interior spaces with the best possible sunlight and, consequently, natural light.

The positioning of the three building blocks therefore serves a dual purpose: shielding the buildings from the disturbance caused by the motorway whilst seeking out the most favourable orientations. Whilst the base of the building is deliberately massive, the interruptions created within the alignments of monumental porches allow pedestrians to glimpse into the interior of the block from the street, integrating the block’s planted courtyard into the urban landscape.

The idea of creating a sense of continuity between interior and exterior, and of blurring the boundaries between outside and inside, is particularly evident in the design of the atrium. Inspired by the theme of the 16th Venice Biennale (2018), ‘freespace’, this space links the entrance area to one of the auditoriums. This generous area provides access to the three buildings in the complex as well as to the Innovation Centre on the plinth, whilst also being intimately linked to the heart of the block.

Biophilia

The project emphasises the creation of more outdoor spaces and their greening. Designed as a three-dimensional garden, the project features an open-ground area at its centre as well as generously planted terraces. These have been designed to accommodate planters containing 70 cm of soil – sometimes even up to one metre deep where load-bearing conditions permit – to accommodate shrubs and even trees.

Team:

Client: Kadans Science Partner, BNP Paribas AM Alts

Development manager: Demathieu Bard Immobilier, COFFIM

Architects: Baumschlager Eberle Architectes

Associate architect: Studio SAME Architectes

Project team: Anne Speicher, Mathias Bernhardt, Pierre Floch, David Porcher, Elodie Bessoule (Baumschlager Eberle Architectes ) Anais Estrade, Marc-Antoine Servella, Flavio Partenope (studio SAME Architectes)

Project management: ARCORA (façade), TPFi (structure, fluid systems, roads and utilities), SOCOTEC Immobilier Durable (environment), Mazet & Associés (quantity surveyor), TechniCité and USUS (landscape), AVEL (acoustics), Qualiconsult (inspection body / health and safety coordinator)

Photographer: Cyrille Weiner