Renault Square Com Communications Center

Renault Square Com Communications Center
Designed as a prototypical manufacturing building for the Renault automobile company, M�tal 57 was nearly obsolete by the time it reached completion in 1984.

Automotive technologies had not changed radically during the construction period, but major structural changes in the company had rendered the vast, brick-clad shed near Paris useless to Renault as a factory.

So, M�tal 57, intended for the fabrication of metal car parts, never operated as a plant, but idled as a warehouse and ad hoc location for car sales to firm employees.

Over the years, the building stood at the center of various transformation proposals and even faced the threat of demolition.

Then, nearly two decades later, the Parisian firm of Jakob + MacFarlane won a competition to turn the structure into Renault's corporate communications center.

This recently completed project has finally revved M�tal 57 back to life.

In 2001, Renault held a competition to convert M�tal 57 into a corporate communications center.

The jury, including Claude Vasconi, selected Jakob + MacFarlane, best known for their Georges Restaurant [Record, September 2000, page 128] atop the Pompidou Center.

Renault's directors envisioned the center as a base for its public relations staff of 250 to 300 people, as well as a place to present new cars to the press and