CCXX

Paris, France

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Other Projects by Architectures Anne Démians

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M9D4

CCXX

Paris, France

Firm

Architectures Anne Démians

Type

Educational › University

YEAR

2012

The location of the new kitchens for the Caisse des Ecoles du 20ème arrondissement in Porte des Lilas represents a bold exercise requiring the integration of an industrial unit preparing 13,500 meals a day in a residential and sensitive district. Placed in the hands of SEM d’Aménagement de la Ville de Paris (Paris urban development agency), the Porte des Lilas ZAC [designated development area] is a town planning operation (2005) incorporating 50,000 m2 of offices and 19,000 m2 of housing as well as 15,000 m2 of public and private facilities including, in particular, the first student residence to be built outside the Cité Universitaire and the new Etoile Lilas cinema complex.
For the architects, the question raised by this type of project is how to ensure that those commissioning the work share the same enthusiasm for the design concept. As explained by Anne Démians, “We are in the habit of believing that everything that touches on the commonplace, on functionality and services should be contained within a mundane architecture as, by definition, the programmes they contain are equally uninspiring. However, in nature, everything has its specific space and a final form that makes complete sense”. In other words, it was necessary to go beyond the preconceptions of what a factory is and looks like to create a positive and poetic dimension related to the process of the 20th arrondissement central kitchen.
Are school kitchens simply urban accessories? One can answer no, as argued by the architect for whom “all programmes, no matter how mundane, no matter how dissimilar from a church, a theatre, a museum or an opera house, can provide architects with an opportunity to underline the importance of those “little things”, so that in day to day living, a language can be built up between local residents and their surrounding architecture”.
Inaugurated in October 2012, this facility creates an unusual presence in the heart of the block, reflecting the will of the Paris city authorities and the Architecture and Heritage Department. Clad in concrete with black highlights and screenprinted windows, this “culinary core” as affectionately nicknamed by Anne Démians is a cubic building with hollowed openings that create coloured shading. A wrought grille made from Corian provides fencing along Rue Paul Meurice as well as the main entrance for vans entering the courtyard. This patio concentrates all the nuisances – be they noise or smell – and allows the neighbouring buildings to profit from a peaceful landscape in the form of a garden and a carefully planted terrace.
After several months of operation and running in, the industrial unit then tested the logic of its spatial layout, given that a central kitchen is no more than a series of flow movements. These movements represent the very basis of its operation; it receives foodstuffs, unpacks them, sorts them, stores them, transforms them and then repackages and dispatches them.
The men and women working in this system are also subject to this logic. Before going to work in the kitchens, they meet up with their colleagues over a coffee on the upper floor before going through the changing rooms and then back along the patio to wash their hands and put on boots before crossing through airlocks to reach their work stations. All this represents a series of steps
This logical
“forward flow” approach ensures that no element can move back in the process. From the flow
of trucks and that of the merchandise through to those working in the kitchen, this was the logic
that dictated the design of the building.
---Please have a look on the French version for pictures !
that, for reasons of comfort and, above all, hygiene, must necessarily be laid out in a logical manner.
By allowing this Parisian industrial module to fully express its credentials, the architect did not just adjust her art of building to meet the city’s new constraints, but also offered what she feels is an intrinsic part of her work, one that she strongly believes in, being a certain generosity with regards her peers and great respect for those living and working on a daily basis in her architecture.

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CCXX

Paris, France

Other Projects by Architectures Anne Démians

M9D4

CCXX

Paris, France

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team