Dock En Seine Offices / Franklin Azzi Architecture

Architects: Franklin Azzi Architecture
Location: Rue Paulin Talabot, 93400 Saint-Ouen, France
Project Management: Neximmo 62
Area: 16200.0 sqm
Year: 2010
Photographs: Courtesy of Franklin Azzi Architecture

Architects Collaborators: Paul Armand Grether, Adrien Pineau
Environmental Engineer: Green Affair
Acoustic Engineer: Acoustique & Conseil
Kitchen Designer: Michel Gaury
Fluid Mechanics Engineer: Berim
Facade Engineering: Façade Design Ingénierie
General Engineering: SNC Lavalin
Technical Inspectors: Bureau Veritas
Planners: Sequano

From the architect. The Saint-Ouen Docks site has an industrial port activity past, which decay had given way to industrial wasteland, and has now become the ideal strategic location for an Eco-Neighbourhood. This labelled project is an example of an environment-driven project.

The main volume of the ‘Dock en Seine’ building comprises six stories. In order to meet the necessary environmental objectives, and to overcome constraints related to streamlining of the programmes, this building was tightly packed.

Down with the very first sketches – and with the valuable assistance of its own Parametric Design Research Laboratory – studies are launched in order to determine: the structural diagram, the building depth, the percentage of facade apertures (based on the variations between the different seasons’ solar radiation), the shape, the data related to artificial and natural lighting, the wind effects, and the load distribution imposed upon the structure (in order to optimize the amount of material and the acoustics). On the facade, the dimensions of the openings are never arbitrary, even if they look seemingly random.

The protective volumetric membrane comprises a series of cells that are juxtaposed, but still, are independent of each other. This passive envelope enables