Login
Registered users
The Upside project was born from the ambition to mend urban fractures in Nanterre and boost the city’s attractiveness. Confronted with an unusually long and narrow lot bordered by railways and a pedestrian axis, the architects rejected the generic bar block in favor of a fragmented composition, introducing a central passageway and dynamic urban sequences. Sun path and wind studies guided the building’s orientation and façade design, supporting user comfort and energy performance. The concept merges sustainable strategies, bioclimatic design and urban openness, fostering community, mixed uses, and creating a vibrant new urban connector for Nanterre.
The Upside project forges a strong relationship with its urban context, transforming a once fragmented area into a vibrant connector between neighborhoods, transport lines, and public spaces. The building’s staggered masses and a central void create visual and physical permeability from the pedestrian Allée de Corse to the railways, linking major axes of the city. Terraced volumes adapt to the natural slope, offering varied urban perspectives and ensuring that light and views are optimized for users. Generous landscaped spaces at the ground level welcome the public, fostering community interactions, while the façades’ rhythmic alternation integrates the architecture seamlessly into Nanterre’s evolving cityscape.
Coated metal was chosen for the envelope to express the project’s architectural vision of dynamism and adaptability while meeting high environmental standards. Its polychromatic finishes allowed the façades to respond theatrically to sun exposure, warm, exothermic tones facing the sun envelope the southern sides, while cooler, endothermic shades reinforce the northern façades. This material’s durability, flexibility, and lightweight nature enabled refined detailing and bold geometric shifts, crucial for the building’s fragmented volumes. Furthermore, coated metal’s low maintenance and sustainable qualities support Upside’s ambition for long-term resilience and energy efficiency, integrating both aesthetic and technical innovation.
The building produces more energy than it consumes, and it is certified “BEPOS Effinergie 2013,” “BREEAM Europe Offices 2016 - Very Good,” and “CERTIVEA NF Bâtiments Tertiaires HQE 2015, Exceptional level,” and at the district scale “CERTIVEA HQE Aménagement” and “CIBI BiodiverCity Aménagement”. Strategies include high-efficiency insulation, exterior composite panels, polychromatic coated metal façades tailored to sun orientation, a 1400 m² photovoltaic canopy, and a geo-energy loop with heat pumps, cogeneration, and dry coolers. Natural ventilation and glare control, plus 40% renewables for regulated energy and 65% for hot water needs, further boost performance. The project’s material palette and technical systems achieve ambitious energy, environmental, and user comfort goals.
Upside is a 20,000 m² positive-energy office and retail complex in Nanterre, designed to reconnect urban fragments and enhance neighborhood life. Built on a highly linear plot bordered by railways and a pedestrian avenue, the project avoids the monolithic “bar” building by splitting the volume into two distinct wings, linked by a luminous central void that offers urban vistas and fosters permeability between city and campus. The façades present a refined polychromy of coated metal, adapting to solar orientation: exothermic tones on sunny sides, endothermic hues facing north, optimizing natural light and energy gains. The variable heights of the building segments reveal the natural slope, while generous setbacks and landscaped public spaces at ground level encourage encounters and urban vibrancy. High environmental ambition is embodied by features such as a 1400 m² photovoltaic canopy, geothermal probes, high-performance insulation, natural ventilation, and a smart energy loop supplying 40% renewables for regulated uses and 65% for hot water. Upside has achieved BEPOS, BREEAM, and HQE certifications. Its strengths are architectural dynamism, technical innovation, sustainable strategy, and its ability to serve as a new connector in the evolving city of Nanterre.
Bechu & Associés, a Parisian architecture agency with a family heritage, has been shaping spaces for nearly a century where heritage and modernity engage in dialogue. Heritage in the service of innovation, we reinvent the city by enhancing what already exists, respecting history while imagining visionary solutions. Deeply committed to sustainable development, we integrate nature and biomimicry at the heart of our projects, to build responsible and harmonious places. Towards an innovative and sustainable future, our team strives to create architectures that connect past and future, driven by a demand for quality and respect for the environment. From Paris to the international stage, Bechu & Associés is dedicated to transmitting, inspiring, and building a more sustainable world, where each project becomes an encounter between heritage and innovation.
