Discovering the Cité Universelle in Paris, the first building that is “exclusively reserved for everyone”

The Cité Universelle is a unique place in France, one providing on the same site a 1,000 seat sports complex that can host international competitions, 1,000 m² of shared rooftop gardens, a ****hotel with 109 accessible rooms, workspaces divided into six areas covering a total of 20,000 m², a co-working space of 1,100 m², a 1,300 m² corporate restaurant, a 300 m² shop, a health centre with eight medical consultation rooms, and finally the ‘Préfourrière de Pantin’.

This building’s special feature is that it is designed to be “exclusively reserved for everyone”. It has been designed to be accessible to all forms of disability, and deliberately aims to attract and bring together all sections of the public, be they sports enthusiasts, working people, visitors or local residents, with or without disabilities, to normalise differences and foster some extraordinary encounters.

The mixed programming of this development encompasses all the functions required in an urban environment, from leisure to work, accommodation, health, retail and public services, making it an active, useful asset for the city and its neighbourhood at all times. It also demonstrates that it is possible to design in an inclusive manner, whatever the purpose may be.

During this guided tour, the fifty people present had the opportunity to discover the site and explore the Cité Universelle quarter of the future. Sébastien Matty, Chairman of GA Smart Building, and Riyadh Sallem introduced the event by sharing this major project’s aims and recalling the origins of the project.

“We started from scratch. This was made possible by the Réinventer Paris call to tender for innovative urban projects. The spark was lit when we met Ryadh Sallem. There was a real feeling of shared osmosis with the architects and all the different stakeholders in the project. We were motivated by a shared ambition to defend a philosophy whereby taking into account the specific needs of some people enhances everyone’s experience. The remote controls, keyboards and even the phones were designed to meet the needs of people with disabilities and, ultimately, they have all changed our lives”, explains Sébastien Matty.

Although the most visible disability relates to the two million people in wheelchairs, also known as in French as PMR (Persons with Reduced Mobility), France currently has about 12 million people with officially recognised, mostly invisible, disabilities, (auditory, sensory, intellectual, psychological, etc.). The wide range of disabilities is truly huge and is too often overlooked. “It should be a matter of routine to take disability into account in an advanced, civilised country. This is not yet true in France”, says Riyadh Sallem.

The guests were then guided to the site of the “Marseillaise” in Paris, where the building will be located. They were welcomed on site by the musical show company R’Mélodies Roissy made up of artists with disabilities. They performed live their own versions of cult songs from the French repertoire to highlight the issue of integrating disability in cities, creating a warm, captivating atmosphere.

The tour then continued to the Place Olympe de Gouges in Pantin, where a demonstration and introduction to wheelchair basketball was organised by the CAPSAAA association on the Allée des Ateliers, providing a complete immersion in the project’s very DNA.

The Mayor of Pantin, Bertrand Kern, took the floor to talk about how to incorporate the Cité Universelle into the local area. “The Cité Universelle’s location at the Porte de Pantin makes it extremely close to our area. It is helping to change our image. This is great news, because it is time that the gates of Paris were beautiful, and this project is playing its part in that. The powerhouse that this site represents will play a dynamic role locally. This will make the area more human and soften its traffic impact.”

The Cité Universelle is innovative not only in its very design, but also in its form. It expresses movement and ensures that the public space around the building is unbroken, with a circular, ascending outdoor walkway. Its clear, transparent facade means the Cité Universelle will put its mark on the Paris landscape and interact with all the buildings around it.

The project is developed by Orash Montazami, the founding architect of Studio Montazami, and Anne Speicher, an associate architect at Baumschlager Eberle Architekten. They have shared its design, with the sports complex at its core…

“Accessibility was not a technical challenge in itself. It just required us to question our usual practices”, says Orash Montazami.

“Its architectural form makes the Cité Universelle truly innovative, particularly in terms of the benefits to office space. We chose an ellipse shape with a central courtyard for several reasons. Firstly, this choice is symbolically clear. Its curved shape is enhanced by the shortened perspective, radiating out evenly into the environment and symbolising the global community. This is a circular project. That means that it offers free, fluid office spaces which can be laid out very simply. Teams circulate, ideas circulate… with no barriers. On every level there are outstanding, uninterrupted views of Paris. There is light throughout all the workspaces”, says Anne Speicher.

With parasport as its guiding principle, the site at the Porte de Pantin will be a multifunctional one. The initial design of the project and the involvement of the partners who bring it to life on a daily basis will mean that everyone can be welcomed on an equal basis, whether or not they have a disability. “Treating an autistic child’s teeth or monitoring a wheelchair user’s pregnancy requires special training in all kinds of disabilities”, concur Nathalie Chapuis, the Director of Urban Innovation and Major Projects at GA Smart Building and Riyadh Sallem.

A year before the Olympic and Paralympic Games take place, the City of Paris has granted planning permission to the Cité Universelle, the largest building in France designed to accommodate all forms of disability. The Cité Universelle plans to open its doors to the public in 2027.