Société du Grand Paris
Headquarters

The project’s principal façade presents several sequences organised around a planted transitional space. Large balconies are set in a series on every second storey and a large urban-style fully-glazed bow window occupying the building’s entire height articulates the south and north-east façades and constitutes the prow of the ensemble. The north-east face hugs the curve of the RER tracks alongside which it runs, and echoes the Balthazar building constructed several years previously by Richard Meier on the other side of the tracks. The atrium, garden and planted patio, the exterior balconies and the spaces of the glazed bow bring natural light to the work floors and make them comfortable places to work.

François Morellet was approached by Denis Valode and Jean Pistre to contribute to this architectural design which constitutes an interface between the building’s residents and the thousands of inhabitants of Île-de-France who take the RER every day. Consistent with his artistic approach, François Morellet strove to involve in his work all those who would later be its viewers. With his characteristic blend of seriousness and humour, he thus came up with Passe-Temps, a major work that is both imposing and light-hearted. When people meet each other in passing, he observed, in most cases they talk first of all about the weather. Thus, according to the weather forecast, the white neon arcs combine to form images announcing a cloudy sky, or the diagonally–placed straight segments in blue neon indicate that rain is on the way, or a red neon arc surrounded by rays in the same colour heralds sunny weather.

This attractive and very original installation creates an unexpected everyday relationship between the building and the public that only an artist could install, given the free and poetic nature of his calling.