GA Smart Building and BNP Paribas Immobilier Promotion deliver the new Up Group headquarters in Gennevilliers (92)

Up Gardens, designed by Tom Sheehan of Origin, has a floor area of 15,400 m² and can accommodate 1,400 employees on 7 floors.

The property complex offers high-quality technical services and a range of facilities, including a fitness centre and a spacious 650 m² lobby, designed to be a place where Up group employees can meet.
Reflecting the project’s focus on comfort and quality of life, the panoramic restaurant and conference space are ideally located on the top floor with direct access to the rooftop. A multi-storey car park with 300 car spaces completes the service offering.

Up Gardens provides over 2,000 m² of planted and accessible outdoor spaces, including the rooftop, terraces and patios. The landscape aspect, which has been designed with particular care, was devised in partnership with landscape designer Emeline Brossard.

These new offices, located near the Les Grésillons RER C station in Gennevilliers and right next to the future metro line 15, have many advantages, including a connection with line 14 just one station away.

Right from the design stage, the head office has had high ambitions in terms of the environment, wellness and connectivity in line with the Up Group’s specifications. It will benefit from HQE^® certifications and labels at Excellent level, BREEAM^® at Very Good level, Ready to Osmoz, WIRED SCORE at Gold level and will be labelled E+C- level E2C1.

Up Gardens has been designed based on a global low-carbon approach. The complex has benefited from the industrial, off-site constructive approach developed by GA Smart Building, which ranges from modelling in FullBIM, to the prefabrication of ultra-low carbon concrete structural elements and facades in its French factories, to assembling them on site. This construction method ensures quality of execution and control of delivery times while minimising the site’s environmental impact and the nuisance to local residents. The offices also house sanitary modules, which were also manufactured off-site in one of the factories in France of Ossabois, a subsidiary of GA Smart Building.

This low-carbon approach was driven by GA Smart Building & BNP Paribas Immobilier Promotion, including the use of low-carbon materials such as carpets, and reused materials such as paints or false floors. This has meant that GA Smart Building has recovered 8,800 m2 of false floors from the Les Miroirs building in Courbevoie and 15,300 m2 from the Crystal Tower in Paris’ 15th arrondissement. These two sources were able to cover 100% of Up Gardens’ needs, with what was left being used for the terraces in the Athletes’ Village in Saint-Denis.

In order to go even further in reducing the carbon impact, GA Smart Building has used the Up Gardens to trial the transport of structural elements by river, so part of the floors was manufactured off-site in its PREGA factory in Criquebeuf-sur-Seine in Normandy and travelled up the Seine from the port of Rouen to the port of Gennevilliers, located just few streets away from the site. This has saved 51% in carbon emissions, compared to transport by road.

“Up Gardens is a testament to the special relationship we have with our clients. This is the second headquarters that we have constructed for the Up group, the third building in Gennevilliers and the fourth building in France. Its delivery marks the excellent cooperation with SEMAG92 (Société d’Economie Mixte d’Aménagement de Gennevilliers [public-private enterprise in charge of the development and construction of Gennevilliers]) over many years, which has also enabled two other major companies to be established on this site, Audika and Balas ,” explained Sébastien Matty, the Chairman of GA Smart Building.

“The Up Gardens project is a perfect example of our ambition to lead the way in terms of an environmental approach. We have a responsibility to provide our clients with sustainable, resilient buildings that will fit into the city of the future, and Up Gardens is a natural fit for this strategy,” explained Olivier Bokobza, the Chairman of BNP Paribas Immobilier Promotion.

“Up Gardens has its place in the town’s urban planning project, achieving the dual achievement: being a workplace that contributes to the local economic and commercial life, and in line with our CSR approach,” adds Youssef Achour, Chairman of the UpCoop cooperative and the Up group.

“We are delighted to see the completion of the delivery of this building, acquired by Primonial REIM France via a VEFA in 2021. We are delighted that the Up group will be one of our tenants, benefiting from a prestigious working environment with a
wealth of services and facilities, in a building with the best environmental certifications and labels (HQE^® level Excellent, BREEAM^® level Very Good, Ready to Osmoz or WIRED SCORE level Gold.),” said Grégory Frapet, Chairman of the Management Board of Primonial REIM France.