Transformation et rénovation de l'OMC

Type

Bureaux

Date de réalisation

2012

Ingénieur civil

Thomas Jundt Ingénieurs civils SA

Maître de l'ouvrage

Rénovation - Fondation des Immeubles pour les Organisations Internationales (FIPOI) / Intra-Muros - Organisation Mondiale du Commerce (OMC)

Autre(s) intervenant(s)

Direction des travaux - Techdata S.A. MAB Ingénierie Sa R.G. Riedweg et Gendre SA V. Zanini, P. Baechli et Associés, Ingénieurs Conseils SA

Surface brute

30'500 m2

Coût

Procédure

mandat direct

Architecte

Group8

Interview de l'architecte

Descriptif

The former International Labour Office (ILO) building was designed between 1923 and 1926 by the architect Georges Epitaux, who extended it four times up until 1957. Occupied since 1995 by the WTO, the international organisation decided in 2005 to make it its main headquarters and to extend it to the west, whilst creating an “intra muros” extension. The latter made it possible to restore to the original building the spatial characteristics that the years of successive transformation had made disappear. The operation consisted in restoring to their original state the protected parts of the building and contemporary conversions at the heart of the building. The first concerned the covering of the 1920s courtyard by a light, transparent double-vaulted structure and the raising of the ground to the level of the offices. This concept offers a very large area, creates a lobby corresponding to the scale of the institution and shifts the focus from the circulation areas to the floor of terrazzo tiles, the pond and its superb ficus. The second architectural action aimed to replace a former provisional library in sheet metal by three conference rooms, which separate from the façades by a glass seal and whose emergence in the 1950s courtyard becomes an accessible garden. Finally, the offices are densified whilst conserving the outside views. The approach sought a mix of old and new with a few nods in respect to materials and colours.