Christian Pottgiesser designed the combined headquarters for two companies Pons and Huot in Paris, France.
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PONS + HUOT Office by Christian Pottgiesser
The project accommodates the headquarters of two companies in Paris – PONS and HUOT – with totally fifteen executives. Consequently the unit has seven individual rooms for each director and one open-space-office for the remaining eight clerks. In addition there is one (divisible) meeting-room, a common recreational room, a kitchen, rest rooms, and, at the special request of the patron, lush vegetation all over the main space.
The base for the construction was a rotten industrial hall built in the late 19th century with a steel framework typical for the period. It is rumoured that Gustave Eiffel realized it.
To start with, the hall was completely restored. A new self-cleaning glass roof was fitted. The whole substance of the building was put back into the original state.
In fact the project consists of an insertion of a wooden unit in solid oak 1,7 m high, 22 m long and 14 m wide. The entire programme is embodied therein. Each individual workplace is incised into the wooden upper surface and covered by a “telephone’-dome in Plexiglas. The four lateral surfaces contain archives, cloakrooms and the kitchen. Completely embedded in the body are the meeting room, the recreational room and the restrooms. The remaining space is taken up by technical transmission systems (computer, electricity, air condition, heating and water) and also by 18,3 m3 of soil, the bed for eight Ficus Panda trees.
Neither entrance hall nor reception were implemented, since visitors are guided by a peripheral path-system leading to all pertinent rooms. The individual offices are situated on both galleries.