Gay Paris: a flamboyant laser cut stainless-steel screen brings unity, coherence and continuity.

At the time of publication, Francis Soler's apartment block in Paris was criticised for making a somewhat frivolous display (AR May 1998). On first impressions, the same could be said of this scheme. For the apartments he chose chubby cherubs as part of a larger than life figurative fresco, applied as transfer-prints to the external glazed screens. Despite the criticism that these could be too oppressive for the relatively diminutive life-sized residents guarded within, Soler has outcamped himself with his latest wrap-around strategy, this time working for the French Ministry of Culture with a more robust, but equally theatrical, stainless-steel screen.

The application of this screen, however, is justified on more than merely gestural or superficial grounds. Here it relates to an urban intention that seeks to unify a number of buildings from distinct architectural eras. It also reinterprets the established conservation principle of addition, where adding new layers to a building can extend its history and life, giving it a new identity and existence.

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The plot forms a complete urban block occupied by two principal buildings: to the north along Rue Montesquieu, the former Ministry of Finance building built by Olivier Lahalle in 1960, and to the south a lavish warehouse along Rue Saint-Honore, built in 1919 by Georges Vaudoyer for the Magasin du Louvre Department Store. To the west along the narrow and dark Rue des Bons Enfants, a small infill building completed the block. This was subsequently demolished as part of Soler's masterplan to open the courtyard onto the street and to allow the sun to penetrate deeper into the heart of the plot.

In considering how to unify the buildings, Soler judged each on its own merits, noting that while the Vaudoyer building was not 'interesting enough to be kept as it was' it did have a certain nobility. The Lahalle building, on the other hand, was apparently 'indescribable' having been disfigured by the ravages of recent history. With two distinct facade options, Soler's intention was to re-establish the site's coherence by effectively smoothing the facades to allow the buildings to be read as a homogenous single entity. A lightweight single-layered screen was therefore face-fixed to the Vaudoyer building, yielding to the existing architectural detail by being cut around cornices and door heads, while a more solid screen envelopes Lahalle's building, including the three-tier mansard rood. Refreshingly, the architect makes no attempt to justify the application of this screen with lists of box-ticking illusions toward a technical or environmental agenda. Soler's strategy came from an instinctive response to the site. It is an example of the sort of simple idea that is all too often translated into thin, cheap and nasty solutions.

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Fortunately, this extensive refurbishment project has been executed with sufficient boldness and finesse to make it a convincing and exemplary model of creative re-use. Behind the screen, the fact that the architect has also rehoused approximately 1000 civil servants, created more than 450 individual offices, and resolved the apparently endless coordination and planning complexities associated with working with existing buildings, goes almost unnoticed.