Heritage
RREEL develops a practice that is free and in motion, at the intersection of architectural history and the history of science. It engages ways of intervening in existing buildings that are at once epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic. The studio conducts archival and on-site investigations to extract traces of the past, restore meaningful material, and allow forms to endure within cultural memory. Observation, documentation, and heritage and condition assessments are the tools that precede every project. Each intervention begins with a critical reading of the work—its materials, forms, and use value—forming the basis for an integrated approach that is simultaneously heritage-led, environmental, and economic.
Attentive to the legibility and reversibility of transformations, RREEL operates through localised “innervations,” moving constantly from fragment to whole to reveal structural coherence and the logic of discontinuities. Traditional craft and experimental techniques are mobilised with the same precision to accompany evolving uses and the necessary adaptation of the built environment. This practice enables interventions of measured intensity: reconnecting periods, preserving shared resources, and fostering an aesthetics of transition.
Contexts
For RREEL, architectural, heritage, and climatic questions are intrinsically linked—just as the scales of the building, the neighbourhood, and the territory are. From listed monuments to ordinary places; from rural and industrial settings to metropolitan and suburban territories, the studio explores diverse contexts and inherited fabrics in order to give them new life: the renovation of two apartments in Le Corbusier’s Molitor building, the construction of a new seaside house, the transformation of agricultural archetypes into living spaces, and the conversion of a landmark industrial facility in Paris’s inner faubourgs into cinema studios in Villa Riberolle. RREEL also produces heritage studies and supports Historic Monument listing procedures for buildings designed by major figures in art and design such as Philolaos and Pierre Paulin. The studio also brings visibility to lesser-known heritage, such as the Bernard House by architect Edith Schreiber-Aujame.
RREEL has developed a distinctive expertise in architectural acoustics through the design of spaces dedicated to sound and audiovisual creation, where architecture becomes an instrument in the service of technical performance and listening quality: post-production studios, recording studios, mixing auditoriums, cinemas, and screening rooms.
Climate
Convinced that a building’s heritage value lies as much in its history as in its capacity to evolve and accommodate new uses, RREEL develops a bioclimatic design strategy applied to existing buildings. Grounded in a precise knowledge of the built fabric, the studio proposes a sensitive reading of the building as a resource—attentive to the potentials embedded in its constructed form and in its dialogue with its environment: light, winds, morphology, thermal mass.
The studio is currently working on the renovation and extension of the Paul Bert school complex in Le Havre and on the energy retrofit of an occupied housing building for Paris Habitat. RREEL thus proposes another way of inhabiting a heritage in perpetual transformation—where each project reopens the question of inheritance, use, and comfort.
