Completed exterior of the Le Nef renovation project. Photo: Benoit Lavant
Projet Le Nef set out to radically transform a building constructed in the 1980s to serve as a Postal Sorting Outlet into an energy-positive, multi-purpose facility comprising a medical centre, offices, apartments and individual houses.
With an overarching aim to demonstrate the feasibility of making old buildings part of a green city, the building (made of reinforced concrete) was extended upwards using prefabricated timber structures. This allowed integration of bio-climatic design principles within a high-performing building envelope, in turn linked to advanced and regularly commissioned heating, cooling and energy-generating systems.
