Regeneration of the Orangery
The Orangery is part of an ecosystem bringing together over 2,000 researchers, students, gardeners, technicians, and administrative personnel. Every year since its construction in the 1930s, the large greenhouse of the Orangery has sheltered the most fragile plants of the Museum’s botanical collections. In the 1970s, a dining hall for the campus community was installed inside the building, which is no longer limited to its function as a winter garden.
A singular architectural heritage
The Orangery was designed by the architect Emmanuel Pontremoli, at the time the Architect in chief of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, and built by the Perret brothers. It exemplifies the early uses of reinforced concrete architecture in France, in a rigorous composition blending an exposed structure, filled in with terra cotta brick and glazed façades. Its framework is entirely composed of concrete, including the rafters and gutters, attesting to the architect’s singular constructive positioning, which gave the building its powerful identity between constructive rationality and functional elegance.
Designing regeneration
Guided by the desire to preserve this 20th-century building, the project aims to restore the Orangery’s heritage value at a time when many 20th-century buildings are overlooked and vulnerable due to a lack of official recognition of their heritage significance. The goal was to preserve the singularity of the Orangery while adapting it to contemporary uses. Therefore, the project is part of an approach to regeneration aimed at restoring its sustainability through the combination of restoring the building, adapting its architecture, and evolving its uses. Thus, what had been the campus dining hall is now transformed into a self-service food facility.
Upkeep was approached as a project in itself, adaptation as a creative act, and transformation as proof of care. In this way, architecture’s long-term future can be secured by cultivating continuities rather than ruptures, and by promoting a well-considered project, designed not to make a statement, but to endure and evolve. In a world marked by political, social, and climatic uncertainties, the regeneration of our built heritage takes on particular resonance as it affirms the necessity for architecture to be a marker of stability, a solid and lasting resource, able to endure through time.
Exploring the Orangery
Careful attention was paid to the existing building, aimed at revealing an atmosphere and a function specific to each façade. Thus, the architecture elicits multiple perceptions.
To the west, the glazed curtain façade of the entrance asserts its verticality that opens onto a new forecourt, a convivial space with a layout reworked as an outdoor dining area. Along the southern façade, a glazed grid gives rhythm to the whole, thanks to its regular and eye-catching pattern. On the east side, the door was replaced so that large-scale plants can continue to be brought into the greenhouse. Finally, on the north side, the architectural language is more functional, evoking the world of industry. The surroundings have been redesigned to facilitate pedestrian flows all the way around the Orangery.
The interior spaces have been fully renovated and transformed to offer new uses, including dining and work areas. The main dining area on the upper floor overlooks the glass and concrete of the greenhouse, bathed in light, a spectacular showcase where the Museum’s rare plant collections are kept.
