Freestyle Heritage
In autumn 2024, French architects Léa Cottreel and Rosalie Robert (RREEL) completed the renovation of a flat in the famous Immeuble Molitor, built in the early 1930s in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and classified as a historic monument in 2017 – except for the interior of the flats. Following an clearing phase that resembled an archaeological site, the architects revisited the design principles established by Le Corbusier in the 1930s, while incorporating features more adapted to contemporary living styles. Heritage, yes, but freestyle.
Yên Bui
Built between 1931 and 1934 for the Société Immobilière de Paris-Parc des Princes, on a 26×13 metres plot oriented west-east, the reinforced concrete building follows the principles of Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse principles. The top two floors are reserved for the architect and house Le Corbusier’s Apartment that served both as his home and his workplace, listed as a historic monument in 1972. This is not the case for the rest of the private flats, whose interior layouts are available to buyers. The free plan ensures that ‘the size of the flat and the number of rooms [can] be modified according to the tenant’s wishes… with the possibility of personalised layouts’.
In this project, the architects from RREEL worked on a sixth-floor flat, arranged in the 1970s into three rooms: a large ‘common room’ and a bedroom on the street side, and the kitchen, bathroom and study facing the courtyard. In their design, they created a continuous wall between the day and night areas, in which all the flat’s storage units are housed. The partition of uses is ensured by pieces of furniture – the kitchen island and the shower cubicle – which are enough to separate the uses without multiplying the masonry.
The client’s wish to ‘rediscover the spirit and qualities of the original work’ meant that, as a prelude to the design studies, a cleaning phase was necessary. According to the Léa Cottreel and Rosalie Robert, this phase quickly turned into an archaeological survey. Accompanied by the Fondation Le Corbusier, the duo gradually removed all the layers of paint and wallpaper with the aim of recovering the original materials. It revealed the porcelain stoneware tiles, hidden under the carpet, as well as traces of the original Solomite insulation. The architects restored the glass paving stone spandrel on the street facade, providing additional natural light without altering the design of the facade of this building, which has been listed as a historic monument since 2017.
Cottreel and Robert joined forces in 2023, after meeting on the benches of the Architecture and Heritage course at Paris-Belleville school of architecture. They both are interested in the restoration of existing buildings, and more specifically the built heritage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using Le Corbusier’s Apartment and archive documents, the architects built up a collection of objects that they drew on throughout the project. ‘We didn’t want imitate the original project. That’s why we chose to implement a “collection of items”, to create a dialogue between heritage and contemporary design,’ explains Robert.
This collection of items is carefully placed throughout the flat so as to retain the notion of open space allowed by the original free plan, and adapted to contemporary living styles. One is a kitchen island, positioned at an angle to separate the kitchen from the new living area, and another is the fully tiled shower cubicle that partitions the bedroom and the bathroom.
The cleaning phase revealed a concrete shelf along the bedroom wall, which the architects restored using archive documents. Their research also led them to discover a laundry crate in the bathroom, which they are reinterpreting for a more contemporary use. More than a restoration, the project is a fine tribute to the work of its architects.
Appartement 24 N. C., 26 Rue Nungasser-et-Coli, Paris 16th arrondissement, 2024
Programme: Renovation of the interior of a flat in the Porte Molitor rental building by Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier
Client: Private
Architects: Léa Cottreel, Rosalie Robert (RREEL)
Partner: Atelier fr/fr (carpenter)
Photographs: Mary Gaudin
Area: 58 m2
Completion: 2024
