Once a car factory, then a magazine HQ, this industrial building in a Paris suburb was ripe for a new identity. Thanks to BDG Architecture + Design, it has now become a campus for WPP’s creative agencies
There’s little left of the original Citroën 2CV factory in Levallois-Perret, a western suburb of Paris, but its legacy echoes through the halls of the new campus built for global communications company WPP. After the French automobile maker relocated 2CV production to Portugal in the 1980s, the building served as the HQ of news magazine Paris Match, but in recent years it had stood empty. BDG Architecture + Design has now helped to transform it into a buzzing office for a dozen or so of WPP’s creative agencies. “It was a privilege to work on a design project on a legacy site that built one of the most iconic cars of its generation,” says Matt Jackson, chief executive officer at BDG.
The Paris campus offers a fresh workspace proposition for the city. Seeking to bring together some 2,000 of its employees, WPP looked outside of the city centre and alighted on a building that was both ripe for redevelopment and had the bones to be transformed into an architecturally adventurous project.
The site’s industrial heritage is on display throughout: round concrete pillars run through the building, while the ground-floor double height space – a remnant from its factory days – now accommodates spacious restaurant Chez Anatole, which doubles as the staff canteen. There is also what the architects call the “street”: a thoroughfare inspired by New York’s High Line that runs the length of the capacious glass-clad building. Plants and wooden seating made by French joinery company Brouillet invite staff to pause for coffee, which is served from a copper clad kiosk. “As well as the street, the restaurant on the ground floor is like a typical French town square where people can meet,” says associate project designer Catherine Johnston, who shows OnOffice around the building. “We wanted to make sure that the space is flexible and creates connections between people.”
A striking perforated black metal stairway leads from the restaurant to the mezzanine, above which are six floors of offices and co-working spaces. Each floor is bisected by a spine of small meeting rooms and there are plenty of larger, state-of-the-art conference rooms dotted around the building for client pitches, presentations and brainstorming. The architects focused on crafting workspaces that are open-plan and comfortably laid out, with hot desks, lockers and black metal grids on walls to encourage the agencies to add their own branding. On every floor, there’s a welcoming kitchen with a large communal table and common room, which is used either for socialising or co-working. Staff are encouraged to move from floor to floor via a large staircase to find a cosy nook or meeting room to suit their particular needs. “The team put together a kit of parts that allows every business to have its own personality, and there is also enough diversity to suit most people’s different ways of working,” says Jackson.
Weaving in plenty of social spaces was part of the brief, so up on the eighth floor there is a smart restaurant, Spark, with Verner Panton pendant lamps and cane bistro chairs by Maison Louis Drucker, which help to ground the campus in its Parisian locale. “We wanted to bring that Parisian feeling indoors, which is especially nice for clients who come here from abroad,” says Johnston.
The project architects have left the building’s sweeps of concrete exposed but softened the interiors with artwork by French street artist Nélio, whose colourful abstract mural adorns the ground-floor entrance. Furniture has been chosen with care to create inviting tableaux of soft pieces from the likes of GUBI and Fritz Hansen, with agencies allowed to bring their own items from former offices. Plush upholstered green seating in the campus’s auditorium makes for a welcoming space for film screenings and presentations.
Timber has also been employed with great precision to add tactility and texture all across the building. For instance, a wood-panelled private dining room adjoins the Spark restaurant upstairs. Its large aubergine-coloured table, made from French oak, was created by local joiner Lacoste Agencement, who also worked on the room’s blue credenzas. Both restaurants’ tabletops come courtesy of Foresso, which makes timber terrazzo out of waste wood in the UK. Sound-absorbing panels from Baux and Abstracta help with the acoustics. When it comes to the new Paris campus, bringing people together – and giving them the tools and space to do their best work – is at the heart of WPP’s thinking. “The different agencies are already strong,” says Jackson. “But now they’re going to be even stronger, because they can work more closely together.”
Photography by Mitch James
This story was originally featured in OnOffice 168,Autum 2024. Discover similar stories by subscribing to our weekly newsletter here
