Max Weber Building – the Structure that Breathes
The Max Weber Building is a pioneer building that reviews in depth the standards of the office building, and uses environmental requirements as a motor of innovation and architectural design. Its 5 levels are 100% wooden structure, including elevator shafts and stairways, while the office space – Flexible and scalable – are free of false ceilings and raised floors false. This passive building without air conditioning is naturally ventilated through an architectural device that manifests roof by 25 ventilation stacks of 3.60 meters high.
The Max Weber building stands inside the vast Université de Paris Nanterre campus with its various concrete and metal buildings comprising a collection testifying to the history of French university architecture built since the 1960s. Located along the path running along the west side of the University campus, the site is adjacent to its entrance.
The program required by the Université de Paris Nanterre grouping the various Social and Humane Sciences research laboratories in the same building.
Based on this architectural program, which is quite similar to one for an office building, the client insisted on a prestigious building capable of enhancing the standing and the image of sciences laboratories, and to encourage exchanges between researchers, to give research a powerful identity and attractiveness in the eyes of students and foreign researchers and finally to reconfigure the west side of the campus of the Université de Nanterre.
The answer to these requirements, the success of the this highly innovative, first time ever project, were possible thanks to the audacity of the client, its unfailing support and on continuous and very positive dialog among the three partners, i.e., the architect (Atelier Pascal Gontier), the Client (the University) and the university’s managing agent (Icade Promotion).
Materials provided by Atelier Pascal Gontier
Photo: © Hervé Abbadie, © Schnepp + Renou
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