Jean Bouin Stadium is located in the 16th arrondissement in the west of Paris. Although the area is mostly dormitory, it is not uncommon to meet tourists who come for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne or watch one of the tennis matches at the Roland Garros stadium. Such a neighborhood in itself challenged the architect, and Rudy Ricciotti saw the main task for himself in "realizing an interesting architectural project and at the same time not coming into conflict with the surrounding city landscape."
The idea of redeveloping the Jean Buen rugby stadium built in 1925 first emerged during the preparation of the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics in Paris. However, due to the fact that London then received the right to the Olympics, the reconstruction of the stadium was postponed for several years: only in 2007 the project was approved by the city council of Paris. The winner of the corresponding architectural competition was Rudy Ricciotti. The redevelopment took place from 2010 to 2013, with the reconstruction consisting in the construction of a new outer shell of the stadium, a small extension of the stands and the creation of new zones for shops, cafes and office space.
Ricciotti is famous for its buildings of museums and concert halls in France. A distinctive feature of his work is the use of openwork facades, suffice it to recall the Marseilles
MUCEM Museum (2013). The Parisian stadium was no exception.
The main new element of the arena is its outer shell, which simultaneously forms the architectural appearance of the building and serves as a canopy over the stands. The result is impressive and even mesmerizing: an asymmetric wavy surface of thin "ornate" lines at the same time "sets the shape of the structure and envelops the building like a skin - a body", - explains the architect himself.
The shell project is based on the unique properties of the ultra-lightweight fiber-reinforced concrete UHPFRC, thanks to which it was possible to create this twisting network of about 20,000 m2. The design consists of thin triangles of different sizes. Each triangular cell, about 8-9 m long, 2.5 m high and only 0.05-0.1 m wide, serves as an element of the "puzzle", which is essentially a shell. Given the complexity of its shape, installation was facilitated by the fact that all the parts were cast at the factory and then installed on site in one go.
The stadium shell is divided into two parts. Part of the façade (9,500 m2) features hollow-cut details of a purely decorative nature, while the roof section (11,500 m2) is covered with glass to protect it from the elements.
