Pouchard Halls

The halls of the former industrial site of the Pouchard factories are a strong landmark within the canal landscape. Building on their context, our proposal chooses to rely on the existing structure—on the interior volumes, on the site’s intrinsic elements, on the monumentality of the brick walls—to create a new piece of the city for two audiences: campus users and the residents of Pantin.

The project follows a logic of minimal intervention, making the most of the exceptional heritage we have been given: the metal framework filled with brick, the Polonceau trusses, the braced lattice beams, the dual‑pitched roofs with skylights, and the overhead cranes, the last witnesses of the site’s industrial past.

Inspired by the spirit of the place, we use this identity as the starting point for its transformation: from a once enclosed and technical space, the halls will tomorrow become a mixed, open, and vibrant environment. To carry out this ambitious transformation, four guiding principles structure our approach: opening and decompartmentalizing to create new spaces and new uses, activating the façades, bringing in more natural light, and inserting interlocking interior volumes, reminiscent of “Russian dolls.”