Commerces de la place de l'Iris

Two new signs and a virtuous worksite on the Place de l'Iris.

The Place de l'Iris has completed its transformation. The old gravel paving stones have been replaced by a 6,000 square meter space that has been completely renovated, from the ground to the planters. Urban living rooms surround new, larger planters for the cherry trees, which now have plenty of room to grow and flourish.

In the heart of a renovated square and facing the Saint Gobain Tower, a commercial shell has taken its place. It is a wooden building that houses two restaurant chains:

• Spok will offer traditional French cuisine, made with fresh seasonal products;
• La Famille, already present in the business district, will offer quality hot and cold takeaway meals.

Built by the company Poulingue Construction and designed by the architectural firm Tolila + Gilliland Atelier Architecture, this shell has the particularity of being built partly in wood, an ecological and renewable material. In keeping with the principles of sustainable development, Poulingue Construction chose to transport all of the wooden elements by river, using the Seine, in order to divide its carbon footprint and CO2 emissions by three! Paris La Défense is pleased with this choice and strongly encourages project developers who invest in its territory to turn to alternative solutions like this one.

A significant carbon saving

To reduce CO2 emissions linked to transport, the company had thought about modal shift. It transported the wood elements packaged in a container between the port of Le Havre and the port of Gennevilliers, via the Seine. It then had a storage platform in the port of Gennevilliers to store the wood elements and to dispatch them to supply small trucks. This platform was located 8 km from the Place de l'Iris, which considerably reduced the distance travelled by truck. Thanks to the modal shift, only 606 kg of CO2 were emitted. That is 3 times less than a 100% road logistics!

A wooden structure to reduce the ecological footprint of the project

The choice of wood is not only architectural. For the Place de l'Iris project, the high mechanical characteristics of wood are adapted to the post-and-beam construction system. Thanks to its strength, wood allows the size of the beams to be reduced to ensure an economy of material. It is a great natural material, less emissive during its production phase because it naturally stores carbon in the order of 900 kg of CO2 per m³.

Within the framework of the project on the Place de l'Iris, the wood structure allows to reduce by 42% the CO2 emission (by equivalence taking into account the modes of production of materials) compared to a concrete structure. In addition, a total of 113 m³ of 100% European wood from sustainable forests will be used to build the structure and the floor of the restaurants. This represents 100 tons of CO2 trapped in the structure, CO2 that does not contribute to global warming!