‘Not just the minimum — the essential’ Renovation of La Boulangerie by Atelier Rita and FBAA
In 2026, Atelier Rita and François Brugel Architectes Associés (FBAA) will complete the rehabilitation and humanisation of La Boulangerie, an emergency accommodation centre in Paris’s 18th arrondissement. This multi-year, on-site renovation project embodies a way of building for urgency while already thinking of what comes next.
Yên Bui
Located in the heart of the Caserne Gley, the 10,000 sq.m building – a former Ministry of Defence site – has housed a night shelter run by Adoma since 2004. In 2024, its transformation began as part of a three-phase project, ultimately aiming to establish three forms of accommodation tailored to residents’ varying degrees of autonomy: an emergency shelter with overnight dormitories, a stabilisation centre, and a reception and assessment centre offering transitional housing for people awaiting the review of their administrative status.
According to Valentine Guichardaz (Atelier Rita), one of the main challenges was to create a space that could combine immediate reception, stabilisation and reintegration into the society. The practice had already explored similar questions in 2017 with an emergency shelter in Ivry-sur-Seine, west of Paris, made up of canvas yurts for migrant families in urgent need of housing. At La Boulangerie, the typology is different: a 130×30-metre, four-storey building. Each type of accommodation was assigned to a separate floor — a layout made possible by separated circulation flows, ensuring that users of different programmes never cross paths.
On the first floor, the original dormitories have been reconfigured into two- or three-person rooms with shared bathrooms. With a total capacity of 386 places, the emergency shelter accommodates people referred by the Samusocial, 24 hours a day. The second floor hosts the stabilisation centre, a 50-bed facility for medium-term stays, designed for people far removed from stable housing and seeking to rebuild autonomy through a personalised socio-educational programme. A dining area also sits on this level. On the top floor, the reception and assessment centre provides 150 beds and a communal kitchen, offering families an additional degree of independence.
Through this renovation, La Boulangerie goes beyond emergency accommodation: it also helps residents rebuild a sense of agency and continuity in their lives.
From a technical perspective, the architects faced several challenges — chief among them, working on an occupied site. Temporary dormitories were set up in the three ground-floor halls, one for each programme, again ensuring no overlapping of flows and preserving everyone’s privacy.
The existing reinforced concrete frame, oriented north–south, was stripped of all internal partitions to reveal 2,800 sq.m open floors. The 6×7.5-metre grid allowed the architects to fit two rooms between each pair of columns, ensuring that every unit benefits from at least one window. Each floor follows a layout where served spaces (rooms and activity areas) line the façades, encircling a servant band of circulation, washrooms, service cores and staff areas. At both ends of the building, communal spaces enjoy generous natural light.
To counteract the institutional feel of long blind corridors, the architects carved out a central patio to bring daylight deep into the building’s core. Exposed biobrick partitions, whose high thermal mass helps retain heat, lend warmth to the atmosphere. For economic reasons, the architects worked closely with the construction team to refine the bare brickwork rather than covering it with plaster. Thermal upgrades were extensive: the roof insulation was reinforced and integrated with a new ventilation system, while the old wired-glass windows were replaced with higher-performance double glazing.
The architects, contractors and Adoma’s on-site teams worked hand in hand to adapt the spaces to residents’ real needs. ‘Adoma’s teams helped us design the spaces around daily uses — both those of the residents and of the staff who work with them,’ says Valentine Guichardaz. ‘Even though we’d already designed emergency housing in Ivry-sur-Seine, the issues here were completely different.’ For instance, one such lesson led to the creation of a technical gallery behind the bathrooms, facilitating maintenance access.
This €14 million project, co-funded by the Anah (National Housing Agency), the French State and the City of Paris, is based on a 25-year lease without a fixed programme, allowing it to evolve over time as needs change.
‘Not just the minimum — the essential,’ declared architect François Brugel about La Boulangerie during a lecture at Ensa Paris-Belleville in May 2025. The phrase captures the project’s ethos: that urgency need not mean austerity. More than a renovation, La Boulangerie stands as a manifesto in action for another way of welcoming — one where architecture becomes a vehicle for dignity.
La Boulangerie, Paris 18th arrondissement, in progress
Programme: La Boulangerie emergency accommodation centre, refurbishment and humanisation of reception conditions at a 438-bed emergency accommodation centre in a former military bakery
Client: Adoma
Architect: François Brugel architectes associés (lead architect), Atelier RITA (associate architect)
Team: BETREC (BE TCE), 42 Consulting CSSI
General contractor: GTM
Photographs: Jared Chulski, Daniel Moulinet
Area: 10,626 sq.m
Completion: in progress
Cost: 14 million euros
Atelier Rita was mentioned in the article on emergency housing, published in issue 464 of AA ‘War and Peace’, still available in our online shop.
