Paris ParcLighting, materiality, façade.

Street-level render of a research building in Paris: a faceted glass volume with a finely perforated screen rises behind a long bronze-coloured canopy that sweeps down to the ground, with people walking across the plaza in front of it.

At a glance

Design thinking: At CD stage the argument is not the idea. It is whether the idea survives being detailed.

Problem: A 15 000 m² research building had to be drawn and specified, package by package, for construction.
Approach: Four luminaire types, two material tests and one façade build-up, each resolved to something a contractor could price.
Outcome: The packages went into the construction documentation set for a building that is now built.

Role: Architectural Intern on a team of seven, in charge of the lighting, materiality and façade packages.
What we designed: Atrium lighting
Material tests
Façade package
Post-production
New drawings, 2026
Duration: May–September 2018
Platforms: Atrium
Façade
Public circulation

The lighting package

Light the building, and let nobody see a light fitting.

The portfolio prints the intentions as callouts: highlight the top of the atrium, railing lights along the public circulation, theatre-like spotlights, low lights in the ramps, and the summary, the atrium is a lantern.

That resolves to four luminaire types: a track at the crown for the walls, a line in the handrail for the route, a low light in the ramp upstand for the floor, a soffit downlight.

The lighting layout, re-drawn.

An atrium void of 32 400 × 13 500 on a 2700 grid, open to a crown at +21 000, galleries 4800 deep either side, a ramped public route 1800 clear. L1 at 2700 centres, 26 of them; L2 in the handrail at +1100; L3 in the ramp upstand at +300 on 1800 centres; L4 on the grid.

Every figure is assumed: the portfolio prints 15 000 m² and no drawing.

Architectural sheet titled Paris Parc, Drawing 01, Atrium lighting: a long rectangular plan with a shaded atrium void, two cobalt handrail lines, rows of small spotlight symbols with aiming arrows, dashed ramped routes in the galleries, a feature stair, keyed zones A to F, a four-line luminaire schedule and dimension strings reading 32400 and 13500.

The façade package, re-drawn as a build-up.

A façade is a depth, not a surface: 780 mm from the perforated screen to the inside of the lining, as a 40 mm anodised screen tray, a 450 mm maintenance cavity, a 180 mm unitised curtain wall and a 110 mm blind pocket, on a 2700 bay with 2900 of clear glazing per 4200 floor to floor.

All assumed; no U-value, g-value, acoustic or fire figure is claimed.

Architectural detail sheet titled Paris Parc, Drawing 02, Façade build-up: a vertical section through a façade zone dimensioned 780 with layers keyed a to f, a clear glazing dimension of 2900 and a floor to floor of 4200, beside a horizontal plan detail at a mullion dimensioned 2700.

Close render of the building’s façade: a finely perforated metal screen with a square pattern set in front of a glazed wall, with the bronze-coloured canopy cutting across the bottom of the frame. — Brand mark 7. The pattern is 780 mm of build-up standing in front of the glass, not a print on it.

The constraint

Every material test eventually meets one sentence: what is costed.

One callout on the materiality sheet begins “until now only the atrium surface is costed with the…” and is cut off at the page edge. The rest is not in the archive, and not guessed at here. The fragment is the condition of the work: at construction documentation a material choice is a cost line. Wood flooring against mineral paving, wood ceiling against metal.

What this page does not know.

A re-drawing of someone else’s building, from a portfolio page, has gaps. Naming them is the difference between evidence and a claim.

D01
Where do the practice name and the role come from?
Context
Portfolio p.108 prints the project, the dates, the phase and the seven-person team, but no practice name.
Options
- Use the portfolio’s wording
- Use the CV’s wording
Decision
Practice from the CV: BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group, Copenhagen, April 2017 – September 2018, labelled as such on both sheets. Role from the portfolio: Architectural Intern.
Why
Where two of her own sources disagree, the more conservative one goes on a public page.
D02
Which figures are real?
Context
The portfolio prints 15 000 m² and nothing else: no dimensioned drawing, no grid, no product or CCT figure.
Decision
Every dimension is assumed, as one coherent set marked on both sheets. The luminaire schedule names types and positions only.
Why
Inventing a colour temperature, or a precision, for a real building would be the least defensible thing on this page.