Tribunal de Paris / Renzo Piano / France

Tribunal de Paris

• Architects:  Renzo Piano Building Workshop  
• Location:  Paris, France
• Owner:  Arelia
• Client/Developer:  Etablissement Public du Palais de Paris + Bouygues Batiment  
• Structural Engineer:  Setec TPI
• Area:  17,500 sq.m (188,368 sq.ft)
• Project status:  Construction Start 2014;  Completion  2017
• MEP Consultant: Setec Batiment, Berim
• Main Contractor:  Bouygues Batiment International
• BIM (Building Information Modelling):  Ingerop
• Facade Consultant:  RFR Group, Permasteelisa Group
• Sustainability Consultant:  ELAN
• Vertical Transportation:  MovveO Ltd.
• Structural Material:  Composite
• Function:  Office
• Building Height:  160 m (524 ft) / 38 stories

Situated on the northern edge of central Paris, the new Tribunal de Paris will regroup various facilities currently dispersed around the capital, becoming the largest law courts complex in Europe. The building takes the form of a slim, transparent, 160 meter tower of stacked volumes of decreasing size, carefully laid out for efficiency and ease of use.

The tower is narrow - only 35 meters (115 ft) for a tower of 160 meters (525 ft), which permits a high level of natural light and contact with the outside world. On both (long) sides of the building the double-skin facade is interrupted by a dorsal fin - a vertical stripe housing the panaramic lifts, which afford vast views out over Paris.

The building is entered at ground-floor level via a 6,000 sq.m (64,000 sq.ft) piazza on the Avenue de la Porte-de-Clichy. Inside the first volume, the 27 m high 'pedestal' to the rest of the building, the vast concourse is totally visible from the exterior through a crystal-clear glazed facade, reinforcing the buildings message of transparency and ease of orientation. From here, some 50 reception desks ensure minimum visitor waiting time.

The new Paris Courthouse accommodates up to 8,000 people per day. The building consists of a plinth five-to-eight stories high, on top of which stands a tower of three superimposed parallelepipeds, whose section diminishes as the tower gets higher, creating a distinctive stepping profile.

The plinth gathers the public services, including 90 courtrooms. The building is entered at the ground floor level, from the piazza, into the monumental public lobby, where the flow of visitors and employees are greeted and directed. This rectangular space is the full height of the plinth, up to 28 meters, and is notable for its slender steel columns and the amount of natural light that enters via skylights and through the glazed facade that looks onto the piazza. Via this monumental room and the two small atria on either side of it, natural light can penetrate the heart of the building. Meanwhile, the eighth floor has a 7,000 square meter planted terrace, the staff restaurant opens onto this large garden. The tower's outline breaks in two places, on the 19th and 29th floors, where 'hanging gardens' have been created.

When the competition for the project was first launched, the French government suggested dividing the law courts into two separate buildings: one for the public functions and the second for the offices. The key idea from the design team was to house all these spaces in one single, important building, which would be capable, by its size and importance, of becoming the starting point for the redevelopment of the area around the Porte de Clichy.

One of the other design ideas, was to build a courthouse that would be in line with a new vision of justice that is modern and humanistic. The facades transparency as well as the lobby's dimensions, enable the public spaces to be open and communicate service to the citizens. Both the general public and users benefit from warm spaces, in particular the public cafeteria and the exterior green terraces.

The building rises out of an L-shaped site, between the city's ring road (Peripherique) and Martin Luther King Park. The principal building's axis follows the north-south diagonal of the park, giving structure to the clichy-Batignolles development area. The south facade turns towards Paris, and north facade towards Clichy. This diagonal terminates a "visual corridor" that leads towards the north, between the east facade of the building and the Maison des Avocats, extending to Clichy. The office facade on the eastern and western sides give views towards Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower, the north and south facades, which are narrower, look towards central Paris or towards Clichy and Mont-Valerien. Special thanks to the architect Renzo Piano for this orientation, the building symbolically opens onto the City.

Sustainable development was one of the main concerns of the project, in terms of energy, the building is high-performing, thanks to thermal inertia, natural ventilation, and the integration of 2,000 square meters of photo-voltaic panels. These add a distinctive interruption to the smooth glass of the facade, and express the government's commitment to sustainable electricity generation in a clear design move.

This low-energy building uses about 70 kilowatt hours per square meter per year, and in some parts even 50 kilowatt hours per square meter per year, which is about half of the consumption of the most recent buildings in La Defense. The building is the first high-rise in France to meet the "Plan Climat Paris" requirements.