Air Liquide A World Building
Because he shared the adventure of its design with its future occupants, the Air Liquide Research & Development Centre occupies a special place in Michel Rémon's career.
"France is your origin, the world is your territory" - this was the founding phrase that the admiring architect addressed to the men and women of the Air Liquide Research Centre. And so the project began...
With these scientists whose research is useful to the whole planet, Michel Rémon has "invented" a unique workplace. The combination of the designer's skills and those of the researchers have thus given the Centre Claude-Delorme the media status of a "world building", emblematic of the Air Liquide group's know-how.
The site's autonomous visual existence embodies its powerful scientific aura. It carries the group's international reputation far beyond the rural landscape of Loges-en-Josas, far beyond the Paris-Saclay scientific cluster to which it is connected.
From the very first approach, the building demonstrates the client's commitment to energy and environmental performance. Its transparency expresses the gaseous fluidity of its "raw material". It also expresses its desire to pay the lowest possible price to the planet. The building solves the question of energy from photovoltaic panels by storing it in the form of hydrogen: a first in France!
The Centre finds its own resources within itself and goes so far as to power the hydrogen cars that drive around it.
The biodiversity of the surrounding garden-world is ensured by the landscape designer Laure Planchais. She pays tribute to the great travelling botanists and to the historical link between the Versailles estate and the Saclay plateau.
"Everywhere, intelligence circulates: between the assembly of laboratories arranged like piano keys, a single passageway brings scientists together. This artery of research is treated as an in-depth space, punctuated by living spaces, dedicated to relaxation or meetings.