This project is part of an urban plan in the Paris Rive Gauche district, intended to contain both the Paris Courthouse and adjacent mixed use development. The site contains a landmark warehouse building by Freyssinet which was to be reused, and is directly opposite the Paris National Library to the north.

Due to the extremely tight available site footprint (80% was already inhabited by the Hall), we proposed to float a new building volume above the Hall which would interface with the existing Hall, creating a composite of new and old. The new slab reflects the Hall in dimension, but is rotated in plan to align with the National Library building. Spatially, this transformation relates processes of justice to knowledge and culture in the city. A Grand Lobby to the northwest links the new and old buildings vertically, and creates an interface to the city.

Structural Concept
In the same way that Freyssinet’s structure was innovative for its time, in terms of material and technique, the structure of the new building pushes the limits of contemporary engineering. Not in terms of pure efficiency, but rather in terms of active feedback between performance criteria and atmospherics.

The structure is based on dragonfly wings which are both functional and wildly varied. Efficiency alone cannot explain their complex variegation. Dragonfly wings contain two different patterns-- one is a ladder-type rectilinear grid, which provides structural stiffness (beam-action), and the other is a multidirectional cellular pattern, which provides flexibility (membrane-action). In the new building, these two systems were deployed adaptively and on a gradient in response to the basic structural diagram. Local hierarchies begin to develop, while an overall coherence and continuity is maintained.