The State rehabilitates the former headquarters of L'Humanité in Saint-Denis, signed Niemeyer

A budget of 41,5 million euros is devoted to the rehabilitation and energy renovation of this wide wave of glass and concrete, undulating on a triangular plot at the foot of the basilica of the kings of France.

"The building, which is completely redone from the roof to the ground, will respond to the best techniques available in terms of energy performance," said the sub-prefect of Saint-Denis Vincent Lagoguey during a visit to the building. site open to the press on Tuesday.

The approximately 2.000 m2 of bonded exterior glazing curtain walls, whose blue-green hue echoes the oxidized copper of the roof of the neighboring basilica, have thus begun to be dismantled with a view to replacing them with double glazing of the same shade.

"The complete renovation of the building is part of respect for the original design and the work of Oscar Niemeyer", said Valérie Forey, general manager of the Heritage Operator and cultural real estate projects. (Oppic).

Built for the daily in 1987 shortly after the end of the exile in France of Niemeyer, an ardent communist activist who fled the military dictatorship in Brazil for twenty years, the Y-shaped building on stilts is typical of the curvaceous modernist style of Brasilia's father.

"It's an ode to concrete. We see the beauty, the sensuality with which it has mounted these waves", underlined Vera Matovic, architect of the "heritage rehabilitation" of this structure with facades and roofs protected since 2007 by their inscription. to historical monuments.

In great financial difficulty, L'Humanité gave up its headquarters at the end of the 2000s to settle in more modest premises in Saint-Denis. The premises were then acquired by the State and have remained empty ever since.

From 2025, several hundred officers from the Regional and Interdepartmental Directorate for the Economy, Employment, Labor and Solidarity (DRIEETS) will be settling there.

Nicknamed the "architect of sensuality", Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) also designed in France in the 1970s-1980s the headquarters of the Communist Party in Paris, the Maison de la Culture in Le Havre and the Departmental Labor Exchange in Bobigny.