When Anatole Kopp wasn’t off designing faculties in Algeria for Ahmed Ben Bella, lecturing about social housing in Cuba, or photographing outdated Constructivist buildings within the Soviet Union, he was ideating lovely constructions in France together with his comrades Pierre Chazanoff and Lucien Metrich.
Immediately, one among their feats—the Grande Nef de l’Île-des-Vannes sports activities complicated—has been gloriously restored by Chatillon Architectes forward the 2024 Paris Olympics to function a coaching facility.
Chatillon Architectes, a neighborhood workplace, was tasked with adapting the constructing after it was closed in 2018 because of decay and accessibility points. SOLIDEO, the French public sector group accountable for financing, supervising, and delivering Olympics services, was additionally a improvement accomplice.
The $13.5 million renovation entailed absolutely restoring the construction’s concrete shell, arising with modern vitality options to enhance thermal efficiency, necessary accessibility upgrades, and becoming in new acoustic panels, wooden flooring, and lights.
“I don’t know of different buildings constructed precisely like this one,” mentioned architect Francois Chatillon after the renovation. “You must put loads of vitality and creativeness to revive this sort of constructing, there are not any guidelines [for this architecture]. Having the chance to dive into this undertaking, to grasp its design and have the ability to revitalize, modernize and convey this astonishing construction again into use for a brand new era has been a unbelievable course of to be part of.”
Paris’s Ceinture Rouge: Then and Now
Grande Nef de l’Île-des-Vannes has lived many lives. When it opened in 1971, it was one of many largest venues in all of Paris. Its kind remembers comparable parabolic buildings within the GDR by Ulrich Müther, or maybe Kresge Auditorium by Eero Saarinen in Massachusetts.
The 32,000-square-foot constructing has a mindboggling floor-to-ceiling top of 280 toes. It’s 1,050 toes lengthy and 550 toes vast. Its hovering parabolic roof was designed by Kopp, Chazanoff, and Metrich to imitate the positioning’s river panorama. The constructing can accommodate 5,000 spectators and has hosted concert events by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, and Queen.
The enduring construction is positioned in L’Île-Saint-Denis, a commune that sits inside Paris’s ceinture rouge, or “pink belt.” L’Île-Saint-Denis has lengthy been a stronghold for the French Communist Celebration, becoming a member of different communes like Montreuil and La Courneuve of their celebration affiliation.
On account of its location, Grande Nef de l’Île-des-Vannes was additionally the positioning of many French Communist Celebration congresses; supplementing Oscar Niemeyer’s French Communist Celebration Headquarters in Paris’s nineteenth arrondissement. (Anatole Kopp, Pierre Chazanoff, and Lucien Metric had been all card carrying Communists, as was Niemeyer.)
However socialists, trapeze artists, and Bruce Springsteen ultimately vacated the constructing. It fell into disrepair within the Nineties and what stood as a replacement for a few years was a tragic ghost of its former self. In 2007, Grande Nef de l’Île-des-Vannes was listed as a Historic Monument by the French Ministry of Tradition. Chatillon Architectes was introduced onto restore it in 2020.
Probably the most noticeable improve by Chatillon Architectes came about on the outside: Designers helped renovate the translucent polycarbonate facade by creating a brand new double-skin insulated cladding that ameliorates effectivity and efficiency whereas sustaining aesthetic integrity, the architects shared.
After the Olympics are over, the constructing will turn out to be an athletic and cultural heart for the area people of Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine.
