Abstract:

At Place du Marché Saint-Honoré, RBTA’s office block sits within the Haussmannian fabric, its envelope sealed and inward-facing. This adaptive reuse converts it from offices into shared-living housing.

Planetary care starts by retaining the concrete post-and-beam frame and cores, limiting work to selective removals—double-skin facade segments, roof glazing strips, and targeted pre-stressed floor panels—to open the through passage and carve “domestic niches” that pull southern light and cross-ventilation into units and the communal core. Demountable, dry-jointed partitions with biogenic insulation anticipate future disassembly. Material care follows through reuse: removed pre-stressed floor panels become full-length benches; facade glass becomes new partitions in communal spaces; sycamore wall panels become kitchen cabinetry and tabletops. Temporal care is built into a bolt-on slab-edge belt carrying a thin limestone facade—durable, low-carbon, reversible for re-skinning, and coherent with Haussmannian stone.

Social and communal care is organized as a continuous belt of shared kitchens, lounge/reading, laundry, childcare, repair, and terrace seating, supporting belonging, dialogue, and dignity across ages, cultures, and backgrounds. As an act of historical care, removing the former enclosure restores the interior passage as a public pedestrian route between two streets, returning the block to the neighborhood.