Standing beside a railway line, the existing building of the National Office of Forests of Versailles (l’Office National des Forêts de Versailles) asserts its role in the urban landscape as the point of entry to the state-owned forest.
Our simple idea for the project was to build a pavilion as an extension of an existing building that fits humbly into the forest context and, through its volumetry and materiality, expresses the different occupations of the ONF. The objective was to create new working spaces that met the functional requirements of the brief but that also approached the workplace as a singular spatial and landscaped experience. We designed this pavilion to arouse the curiosity and wonderment of visitors. Whether they are collaborators or just passersby, we want their discovery of this place to be an immersive experience, where every corner is an ode to the skills and expertise of foresters.
This project evokes a wooden sculpture balancing upon several pieces of wood. The proudly standing roof, easily visible from the forest path, becomes the project’s centerpiece. It rises as the preeminent feature, drawing the gaze of the strollers on the forest path, whilst in the background one sees the roofs of the city of Versailles. It is this object that we wanted to emphasize in the landscape, by aiming for a structural balance that strengthens the dialogue with the morphology of the existing, contiguous building.
Cut from solid pieces of wood, these blocks outline the clear organisation between the served and serving green spaces. Thus, the void and the mass of these blocks guides users through the interior space entirely composed of wood, where the corridors laud the dark, highlighting the actual forest landscape within the office spaces.
All of the wood used for the pavilion’s roof and façade comes from the state-owned forest of Versailles, managed by the client of this project. It was cut and machined in a local sawmill, which explains the thinness of the wooden slats made possible by the availability of machining and using chestnut wood. From intention to necessity, a calendar-based strategy was determined with the ONF to include the 7 months of drying required for the selected logs. The building's furnishings and signage have been designed and made to measure, entirely in wood. They are inspired by the typographic vocabulary of woodcutters’ markings on trees.
The pavilion’s recessed position in relation to the natural terrain and its broad, peripheral wooden cap protect the offices during summer heat waves, by retaining the coolness of the two walls built with millstones. The pavilion’s high-performance bio-sourced insulation and its natural cross-ventilation system through its wide façade enable the project to go without artificial climate control. Biosourced insulation and a biomass heating system provide reliable thermal comfort during winter months.
Team:
Owner: Office National des Forêts - agence Île-de-France Ouest
Architect: ADT - Atelier Delalande Tabourin
Project manager: Nicolas Delalande
Photos: © Maxime Delvaux
