When she learned that the Insee tower was doomed to demolition, Dominique Cordesse was sick of it: “It ripped my heart out”launches this architect, former elected municipal official of Malakoff, who was there when the tower came out of the ground in 1974. This tripod of nearly 30,000m2, which has become a symbol of the city, housed INSEE until 2018. destroyed to rebuild an office building intended to accommodate agents of the Ministries of Health and Labour.
“It’s a bit sentimental my reaction, but how can we destroy this building?”, protests Dominique Cordesse. The regional council of the order of architects supports the petition launched by the inhabitants to oppose the demolition of the tower built by the architects Serge Lana and Denis Honegger. Beyond the heritage aspect, the inhabitants of the collective “Immeuble Insee pas fini”, denounce a “ecological aberration”.
Rehabilitate rather than destroy to rebuild
The collective demands a rehabilitation of the building rather than its destruction. This solution would make it possible to save 6,000 tons of CO2 according to the costing that they had carried out by a specialized firm. “5 years ago the deal was different, says Pascal Bordes, member of the collective. “But today these environmental and ecological issues we take the full brunt of them and we cannot defend a project which is an ecological aberration”.
The question of renovation, the State asked itself, but this hypothesis was quickly evacuated, according to Philippe Benoîst, director of the project at the Ministry. For several reasons. “The surfaces were well below our needs. These are very partitioned offices from the 1970s which no longer correspond to what is done today in tertiary real estate”. The official also mentions the problem of asbestos and the obsolescence of the technical installations. “If we had wanted to rehabilitate, we could only have kept the skeleton”.
But, explains Philippe Benoist, “Keeping the Insee Tower would not have granted the city of Malakoff’s request to move a school currently located on the edge of the ring road”. In the current project, 40% of the land has in fact been ceded to the City to transfer the school to the other side of the plot, to a location further away from road traffic.
© Radio France
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Lucas Bouguet
As the demolition approaches, the inhabitants ask that the consultation continue. Dominique Cordesse recommends taking the necessary time during the asbestos removal phase to rethink the project “by bringing everyone together around a table and first listening to the inhabitants of Malakoff. Anyway, whether it’s for rehabilitation or demolition, you have to start by removing asbestos first and that takes at least a year.”
The contract paving the way for demolition should be awarded in the coming weeks for the start of work in 2023. By then a new meeting will be organized, promises the project director.