A set of historic Haussman courtyards has been transformed into a new retail development. With the existing courtyards identifiably domestic in scale, our project adds an urban dimension by opening up previously shut and barred windows to create cafés and shops on the ground floor. Stacked ‘cubes’, inhabited by retailers, give the scale of the city to the historic courtyards.
Prior to 1910, many of the streets of Paris were paved in blocks of hardwood, mainly oak. But in that year, “La Grand Crue de la Seine” (the great flood) lasted so long that almost all the blocks came loose and floated away. In just a few places in Paris, the timber paving still exists.
In 2014, we began an investigation to see whether timber paving could be brought back to La Marais in our project to bring the disused Haussmann courtyards back into the public life of Paris.
We considered various shapes and sizes of wood blocks and were drawn to the hexagon patterns.
As an important element of the project is about creating a public route which leads from one court to the next, we introduced a chevron path of rectangular blocks that playfully leads you on your way.
The first courtyard is now complete.