This Innovation Campus Revitalized an Empty Paris Office Building

The Maison RaiseLab isn’t your typical “third place.” A coworking space with boutique hotel vibes, the building invites startups and large corporations to share an environment designed to stimulate collaboration and encourage innovation.

Located in Paris’ 11th arrondissement, the 2,500-square-meter (26,910-square-foot) building stands out from its faubourian and haussmanian neighbors thanks to its unconventional geometric façade, which was conceived with the help of parametric design software that uses algorithms to enable architects to design complex and unusual structures.

“Aesthetically, the façade maintains the historic characteristics of the building, while also projecting it into a different temporality,” said Donatien Dalous, architect and co-director of PDA Architecture, in an interview with LoopNet. “We wanted people who knew the building before to be able to see that it evolved, but that it wasn’t demolished.”

A former workshop/office built in the 1970s, the building underwent a 10-million-euro renovation that involved lifting the entire structure to expand the basement, adding two extra floors above it and creating a massive, double-curved skylight in the interior courtyard, which was also designed with parametric software.

After three years of planning and 18 months of construction, the Maison RaiseLab officially opened its doors in February 2021. The renovated eight-story building houses open-floor coworking spaces, private offices, flexible conference and event rooms, a sports room, a podcast studio, a restaurant and bar and a green rooftop.

Like the projects that have since evolved within its walls, the Maison RaiseLab is the product of a collaboration between many actors, all dedicated to entrepreneurial innovation.

In this case, Raise – a French investment company focused on responsible and sustainable development – and SchooLab – a training and consulting studio with operations in Paris and elsewhere in Europe – joined forces to create RaiseLab, a consulting and guidance company dedicated to fostering synergies between businesses of all sizes.

While the collaboration had been developing for several years, it solidified at the very moment when Raise REIM (Raise’s real estate subsidiary) was planning the purchase and renovation of the building on Fontaine-au-Roi street. Knowing that the building needed a tenant, the collaborators had the idea to turn it into a campus that would embody RaiseLab’s mission.

“The idea for RaiseLab was already being discussed between Raise and SchooLab while Raise REIM was buying the building in parallel,” explained Chloé Tuot, RaiseLab’s COO, in an interview with LoopNet. “So, with that vision, it right away gave more heft to the project, which was otherwise just in the early planning stages.”

Although RaiseLab’s primary business is consulting, the new campus also allows the company to host around 20 businesses in its multiple workspaces, thereby encouraging exchanges between groups which may not have otherwise crossed paths.

“All the residents are here because they’re focused on B2B,” explained Tuot. “So, they play a really important role for the consulting services that we offer.”

There are two types of lease contracts available at Maison RaiseLab. Startups and scaleups sign one-year contracts, and the spaces they rent serve as their primary place of business. Large corporations, on the other hand, sign two- to three-year contracts and benefit from RaiseLab’s innovation consulting services. Unlike startups, large corporations rent space at Maison RaiseLab to complement their headquarters elsewhere. “They send their strategy teams, their innovation teams or teams that are working on a project with a startup,” explained Tuot.

Large corporations that have recently taken up residence at Maison RaiseLab include Veolia and Daher. Resident startups include Samp, Datapred, SoScience and Linkfluence.

The event spaces and conference rooms are open to residents and to one-time rentals. RaiseLab also plans to open those spaces to local organizations as a way to provide access to the local community. “That’s really important in the long run, especially when you’re thinking about it from a ‘third place’ philosophy, as opposed to just shared offices,” said Tuot.

From the outset, the Maison RaiseLab was intended to be a space for inspiration and reflection to help foster collaborations between large corporations and startups and to generate both economic and social value.

The landlord and tenant therefore joined forces to develop a common vision for the building, along with architects PDA Architecture, construction team Dumez and interior design firm Label Experience.

“We really went through each step hand in hand [to achieve] the creation of an open and flexible third place that embodies the vision of sharing and collaboration that is really at the heart of RaiseLab,” said Tuot.

Sophie Darrière, co-founder of Label Experience, who oversaw the building’s interior design, furnishings and signage, explained that the vision also inspired the design of the building itself. “The idea was really to design the building around the notion of the growth of an idea that progresses through the floors,” she said.

The basement and ground floor represent the source of the idea, and are therefore designed with a blue color scheme, she explained. As users go up into the building, the colors shift toward yellows and oranges that represent the light of day, eventually arriving at the green rooftop patio. Here, both long-term residents and occasional events can take advantage of an uninterrupted view of the Paris skyline.

“We tried to activate the rooftop to make it both a garden and a green space that provides rainwater retention and mitigates the heat island effect in central Paris,” said Dalous.

To accommodate its residents’ changing needs, the Maison RaiseLab’s design team emphasized making the spaces as modular as possible in order to create “a building that grows in time and adapts to the evolution of its users,” said Darrière.

Most spaces can therefore be configured differently based on the number of people occupying them and their intended use. For example, the conference room has four different electrical layouts “to be able to respond to a number of different event types or occupation themes, from a regular conference room to a sports room to a workspace to a brainstorming room, etc.,” according to Darrière.

The building was also designed with the idea that it would resemble a hotel more than a typical coworking space. In the beginning, the building even housed a full floor of hotel rooms to be able to host workers visiting from elsewhere in the country or in Europe. While that aspect of the Maison RaiseLab was pulled from its operations after opening and the hotel rooms converted into private offices, the hospitality philosophy stuck.

“It really has a luxurious feel,” said Tuot. “You can see it in the details and the materials throughout the building. We sometimes host executive luncheons for businesses on the CAC 40 index, and they’re pretty impressed with the space.”

This approach also influenced staffing decisions: 90% of the Maison RaiseLab’s employees come from the hospitality sector, ensuring a high level of customer service. “We have 100 to 120 residents, and the employees at the front desk know all their names,” said Tuot. “And for those who get a drink at the bar, our servers know their favorite drink.”

On the environmental side, the building was awarded an “Exceptional” HQE rating for its energy efficiency, air quality and locally sourced materials. The team also limited embodied carbon impact by conserving the existing structure of the building as well as 50% of the floors, and by harvesting materials from the site for other projects.

“The goal isn’t to knock everything down, but rather to create continuity,” said Dalous. “And to also ensure reversibility, so that tomorrow, the building can house different uses without requiring too much adaptation.”