Offices Îlot 9B Lille

Anno 2018, the Euratechnologies site is a sustainable redevelopment of a former factory site into a contemporary living and working space along a side-arm of the river La Deûle in Lille, France.
Îlot 9B occupies a prominent place in the central green space 'grande pelouse' dominated by the ZAC building.

META's design seeks out the boundaries of the plot to generate maximum volume, but at the same time limits the building depth with a large central patio that extends over all floors and forms an inner garden at ground level.
On the ground floor, the facades retract to create a gallery that forms a pleasant transition between the public domain and the building.

The above-ground volume extends over five floors. The spaces are designed to be as flexible as possible, allowing all possible programmes to be integrated into the volume: landscape offices, room offices, new forms of work, meeting rooms, auditoria, conference facilities, etc.
A proposal was developed in which the most public functions (meeting rooms, auditoria, conference facilities) are located on the ground floor level. Public programme is also provided on the roof, in combination with a roof terrace that extends around the building. The more private workplaces are then provided on the intermediate levels +1, +2 and +3.

The vertical circulation consists of four circulation cores, each with one staircase and two lifts. These are positioned at the corners of the floor plan, so that they are spread as widely as possible over the available surface area. In this way, they are not only quickly accessible from every workstation, but the walking distances in the event of an evacuation are also kept sufficiently short.

Underground 2444m² is constructed, which is reserved for 234 parking spaces and technical rooms.

The above-ground structure is integrally constructed in CLT (cross laminated timber); below ground everything is in concrete. During the design process, an appropriate structural size for this hybrid structure was thoroughly searched for. In the end, a grid was defined that both fits the micro-piles of the foundation, is aligned for optimal and efficient parking, and allows for all possible office forms (landscape offices, room offices and offices according to the new way of working).

In the interior, the shell-is-finished principle is applied. The structure remains visible but is finished with a matt, white-wash varnish layer. Everywhere computer floors are provided, finished with carpet. Any walls on the office levels are wooden system walls.
On the outside, the building is wrapped in insulation and finished in grey anodised aluminium. By also using grey anodised aluminium for the joinery, the building and the joinery become one. The deeper volumes - the ground floor and the roof - are finished in polished aluminium, creating a mirror effect.