CHÂTEAU ROTHSCHILD

Close to the historic center of Paris and the La Défense business district, the Château Rothschild is strategically located: near Roland Garros, the Parc des Princes and the Longchamp and Auteuil racecourses, its location offers an attractive potential for the development of a hotel offer for the business community.

Without being exclusive, we have chosen to develop a business-oriented offer (rooms that can be privatized for colloquiums, seminars, conferences, management committees, and screening rooms) completed by more traditional offers (a restaurant, a bar, a nightclub, individual rooms, and a large spa with a swimming pool, sauna, and treatment rooms).

The interior layout respects the original plan: the grand staircase has been preserved and renovated: the access to the rooms follows the original distribution with a long circulation corridor running along the eastern façade. The rooms, spacious and with exceptionally high ceilings, face the park to the west. The offer is varied, ranging from single rooms to suites. The outbuildings are also rented as a hotel residence with a kitchenette.

The common areas offer varied and flexible uses, particularly on the first floor and in the infrastructure.

The treatment of the interior walls is twofold: the original enclosure walls, preserved and frozen, are clad with a glass skin that lets you see both the ruin and the structure that allows it to be consolidated; the interior walls are proposed in classic woodwork. The floors also propose the implementation of parquet laid in French herringbone.

From the vulnerability of the remains of the castle, the materials of the ruin, the evocation of the past and lost splendor, we lent ourselves to the exercise of exploring the fields of possibilities. The idea of a mimetic and caricatured restitution of the original volumes of the castle, of its facade and its roofs seemed neither conceivable nor sufficient. The sudden degradation, the lack of original documents and the "myths" nourished as the "decadence" of the castle progressed, allowed us to hold a different postulate.

We looked for what, being authentic and compatible with a reuse program, should be preserved. As opposed to a restoration bias, we proposed to maintain certain parts of the existing ruin in their original state, in order to allow a complete reading of the different stages of the castle's evolution.

From this we decided to create an additional volume, contemporary, which would come to "coat" the existing volume of the castle. Like an interior corset, this new building plays both a role of "maintenance", but it also engages a respectful dialogue with the existing. By this play of superposition we wanted to make evident and sensitive a chronological stratigraphy that allows to continue to appreciate the original design, to visualize the alteration of the building, while ensuring the comfort of its new functions.

The park of the castle, also classified as a site in 1952, is part of this reflection on the duality of heritage and modernity. The objective of protection as a site is to ensure the preservation and conservation of a place. It is not a matter of freezing but of accompanying the site in its evolution: it is the spirit of the classification that must endure. It is this guiding thread that also guided us in the project of landscaping the site. Our proposal follows two axes: open the castle to the Seine and link it to the city / recover and enrich the park's atmosphere.

At the city level, the castle is also a pivotal point of the future urban development planned by the master plan of the city of Boulogne. Nourished by a research work on the original project of the castle, we propose to redesign the terrace of the castle so that the latter finds a clear position as a belvedere on the park.

This earthwork is completed by the addition of a dreamlike element, a water mirror, an open reference to the moats of the castles. This mirror offers visitors a new look at this long-neglected heritage.