Heavy restructuring was needed to install university facilities (the teaching premises of Paris VII University) in this reinforced concrete market built in 1950. The volumetry of the building was preserved because the envelope structure provides its main strongpoint and architectural interest.
The building has therefore been totally preserved, with its towering ceilings, vaulted reinforced concrete shell and skeleton façades filled with huge prefabricated concrete panels. Only the central bay was entirely emptied to make way for the lecture theatres, with no intermediary load-bearing point. These almost back-to-back space, which sit inside the existing envelope like a “ship in a bottle,” compose a linear form that is independent of the two side bays and determines an open space beneath the vaulted ceiling in which computer cabins have been installed for the students. The creation of glazed roofing ensures overhead daylight and helps to enhance the dome, which is visible from Level 4. The circulation areas are organised so as to distinguish and separate the flow of students: the tutorial rooms in the side bays are accessed via linear circulations at existing floor level, while the lecture theatres in the central volume can be reached via platforms created on each half-level. Some classrooms are double height and use of glass brick partitions thus allows indirect daylight into the circulation areas, which span two or three levels. All levels can be accessed by four large open staircases. On the ground level, two large double-height passages treated as cross-halls connect the Esplanade des Grands Moulins to the other university buildings further east.
The original façades and balconies have been kept almost exactly as they were. Glass bricks have made way for glazed frames protected by sun-screens made of fibre reinforced concrete slats that underscore the overall linear rhythm. In a different register, the university refectory has been installed as an extension on the riverside gable. It is a lightweight construction with a metallic structure and fully glazed façades.