Rueil-Malmaison, France
1991
Shell France Head Office
The head office of Shell France has left Paris for Rueil, rue de Berry for the “countryside”, and the golden triangle for a site opposite the motorway. The site is huge, and the area residential. The project goes beyond just fitting in with its surroundings: it is concerned with composition, with the creation of a site by and for the head office of Shell France. It is about defining a place, building a site as much as an edifice, and providing space and gardens for a new quality of life.
Client
Program
Area
Planning
Client
Shell France
Program
Offices, conference rooms, restaurants, cafeteria, retail.
Area
35 000 m²
Planning
Delivery
1991
The building rolls out to the boundaries of the allotted site, and it branches out to create gardens at its heart, each of them unique. Fragmentation and articulation of the volumes allow each entity to be read both independently and in relation to others. Severe, functional composition is twinned with sensitive, poetic composition: paths alongside the river, views of the gardens, and cascades of water, first into a pool and then into the river.
Facing the Chatou hills, and with the Seine below, the site is built with the slope it occupies: the buildings rise as they become more distant, each time finding anew the view of the river and its opposing cascade. Between car parks and offices, hills and river, a gallery is housed under a sloping glass roof. A lively walkway, it serves the relaxation spaces, and brings the urban into this world of offices and gardens.
An interior street alongside a watercourse, alternating gardens and offices, and a composition that takes in the Chatou hills: in Rueil, the site of Shell’s head office is built as a project that draws as much inspiration from landscape as from architecture.
Facing the Chatou hills, and with the Seine below, the site is built with the slope it occupies: the buildings rise as they become more distant, each time finding anew the view of the river and its opposing cascade. Between car parks and offices, hills and river, a gallery is housed under a sloping glass roof. A lively walkway, it serves the relaxation spaces, and brings the urban into this world of offices and gardens.
An interior street alongside a watercourse, alternating gardens and offices, and a composition that takes in the Chatou hills: in Rueil, the site of Shell’s head office is built as a project that draws as much inspiration from landscape as from architecture.
CAPC – Bordeaux
Contemporary Art Museum
Contemporary Art Museum