Once upon a time... the virtuous restructuring of Saint-Fiacre

Listed as one of Paris's historic buildings, the Saint-Fiacre complex has undergone several renovations. In the early 2000s, its basement was converted into a car park. A godsend at a time when parking in the capital is a real challenge! Matthieu Péchard explains: ‘When the last tenant decided to leave the building, the question of a complete overhaul arose, because the occupants were not enjoying optimum comfort. However, there was no question of touching the structure - the roof, the shell, the façades or the joinery - which is protected as a Historic Monument.’

However, the entire interior layout has been redesigned. Gecina wanted to make the works an exemplary site in terms of the circular economy. We put out a call for tenders for the services of a specialist environmental consultant,’ recalls Matthieu Péchard. The Bouygues group's ELAN company was chosen, and it joined forces with Tricycle to strip out the interior of the building, in other words to ‘clean out’ it.

Carried out by workers on integration schemes, as required by the call for tenders, this clean-up encouraged the reuse and recycling of materials and equipment. For example, we donated the kitchen to Le Paysan Urbain, an association, and offered the light fittings to La Grande Coco, a third-party architects‘ centre,’ he continues. And anything that couldn't be reused was deposited on the Baticycle digital platform, developed by Tricycle.’

The project was also supported by Proclus, a company that reused and reconditioned technical components such as electrical panels and air conditioning units. They were reconditioned by Proclus, giving them a second life.

In total, more than 34 tonnes of equipment were reused on this exemplary site.

And that's not all! The remaining 120 tonnes of materials were meticulously sorted on site into dedicated skips and recycled. Six per cent of the total was even recovered in the form of energy for district heating. ‘This sustainable approach has avoided the emission of 86.6 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, representing 43 round trips by plane between Paris and New York,’ Matthieu Péchard sums up. Gecina is also aiming for BREEAM environmental certification for the Saint-Fiacre building. With this in mind, the development was designed from the outset to be as efficient as possible in operation, by connecting the building to the networks of the Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain (CPCU) and Fraîcheur de Paris, two companies that manage the capital's sustainable and virtuous public heating and cooling services.