Parc André Malraux Offices at Nanterre, France

The André Malraux park service area is located in the city of Nanterre, outside the public boundaries of the park. The image of this project is a warm garden fence, in a human scale, on which vegetation is treated like « vegetal coats », composing a base with carved and leveled volumes. These volumes answer to the flexible and organic pattern of the park. The base is like a translucid screen that both protects and controls views and sunshine. From the inside, outdoor spaces and garden are to be seen, like surrounding landscapes. The volume’s façades on the upper floor have their own identity, they rise from vegetation to open working and common life spaces. Their pattern is continuous with the vegetal terraces, and give the illusion that the vegetation is growing on the rising volumes’ walls. They compose a game of fills and voids that filters views from the outside. The project mirrors its programmatic organization by clearly defined entities, and accurate relations.

A patio-garden is created between the buildings, reminding the interest of work in the office: the preservation and the gardens and vegetation wellbeing. By giving quality to its views from the offices, the garden is also designed as a lounging and resting space.

The landscape challenge of this project is to reinforce the presence of the existing green corridor north, a belt of epicea and poplar trees that weave a link between avenue and park: a vegetal visual boundary for inhabitants of the building facing the service area. Strengthened by the renewing of the trees and complementary growth, the service area thickens with planted ramifications of trees that penetrate inside the parcel, between the buildings and the storage areas of plants.