In a historic neighbourhood located just northwest of Paris’s 18th arrondissement in France, AZC Architectes has finished the stunningly minimalist Business Center Binet, presenting those who use it with nearly endless spacial possibilities.
The centre is located in the Porte de Montmartre neighnourhood, bordering the stunning town of Saint-Ouen. Freshly renovated in several areas and capacities, the place where the new business centre sits is part of an extensive urban renewal project taken on by the city of Paris in order to better facilitate modernizing changes to its historical local architectural fabric.
In fact, this is actually one of the several projects that were named priority in its particular location! This business large complex was created to provide a brand new home for up to 59 businesses. Alongside those premises, it also features shared spaces like communal areas, a large multi-purpose hall, a fully equipped conference room, and a cafeteria. There are even 33 easily accessible underground parking spots!
Besides providing new (or newly moved) businesses with flexible, modern, and diverse spaces to work out of, the goal with this business complex was to provide a structure for local businesses that is actually sustainable. The building’s solid facade and simple but sophisticated interior communicates a certain quality of life and business and takes fantastic advantage of available space.
Most spots up for grabs to businesses are generously open in their arrangement and concept. Many offer terraces and uniquely shaped workspaces, with spots for individualized tasks and collaborative efforts. At the same time as it offers several things that are practically useful for a workplace, the building also gives employees and clients there breathtaking views and carefully landscaped green spaces that contrast in a lovely way with the still quite urban setting in which the building sits.
In terms of its actual layout, the building turns at a right angle into a sort of L-shape, letting it run parallel to two different roads. This shape affords it more window spaces in each business premises, making the rooms bright and well lit no matter where they’re located within it. Large, spacious hallways are featured right from the ground floor upwards, with elevators easily accessible, central, and simple to find on each floor so that movement through the building is simple and flows well.
The building also offers a certain level of welcoming, contemporary transparency throughout the floors, where the fronts of most office and work spaces are comprised of stunning, glazed floor to ceiling windows just as tall as those on the outside of the building letting daytime pour in. This lights flow throughout the whole building itself, traveling through the rooms rather than hitting them all individually and differently but then being collected and left to sit still in the interior of each.
In fact, the emphasis on natural sunlight and its flow was so high on the designers’ lists when they began planning the new business centre that it was actually listed as being inspired by the concept of building a “daylight factory”! The clean, simple materiality inside lets sunlight bounce off polished concrete floors and warm smooth, light wood in a way that gives each space plenty of character before they’re even occupied and furnished by a business.
This heavy emphasis on maximizing the amount of sunlight that reaches an interior space is actually one of the main ways the business centre displays its little bit of Westernized influence, since that’s actually a North American architectural priority. In other places, however, the building is still distinctly European, as can be seen in the fact that it’s topped by a sunny, quiet rooftop terrace, something that isn’t as common across the pond from Paris and its outlying towns.
Photos by Sergia Grazia
