Comet Meetings will run the meeting and conference centre at Arboretum in Nanterre: 2,300 sq m at the heart of Europe's largest solid-wood campus, from 2023.
Comet Meetings, the specialist in corporate meetings and events, will operate the Arboretum meeting and conference centre under a commercial lease. Fifteen minutes from Place de l'Étoile in Paris, Arboretum, due for delivery from December 2022, is Europe's largest solid-wood campus: it offers 125,000 sq m of low-carbon offices and services within a 9-hectare private park on the banks of the Seine. Covering 2,300 sq m over four levels, the Comet Meetings meeting and offsite centre sits inside “La Fabrique de la Connaissance”, one of Arboretum's two refurbished industrial buildings. From 2023, Comet Meetings will therefore offer a new green meeting concept a stone's throw from Paris.
A meeting centre to recharge, meet and work together
Like every venue chosen by Comet Meetings, Arboretum's “La Fabrique de la Connaissance” is an unusual building, designed by the Hubert & Roy practice. Its interior design is the work of the Comet Meetings teams, who give each of their venues a world and a colour of its own by drawing on the identity and history of the site. The fit-out will be built around the theme of the workshop and of contemporary manufacturing revisited, letting old and new live side by side. Both peaceful and energising, the venue will be exemplary in terms of environmental impact and will let companies bring their teams together in a setting that encourages exchange and collaboration. It will give solid arguments to leaders who want to persuade their teams to return to office life in a different way. It will be open to Arboretum's companies and their partners, but also to any outside company wishing to hold an event or an offsite. “The environment is one of the essential ingredients of a successful meeting. A venue like Arboretum is a real opportunity for clients who have neither the time nor the budget for a country offsite outside Paris. It will let them experience a day of meetings with all the benefits of the countryside, without the journey!”, says a delighted Victor Carreau, CEO and co-founder of Comet Meetings.
Arboretum, an office campus in the heart of nature
Located in Nanterre, where La Défense meets the Seine again, the Arboretum campus was conceived as a “forest city”. It comprises five new solid-wood buildings and two refurbished industrial buildings. Designed by leading architects (François Leclercq, Nicolas Laisné, Dimitri Roussel and Hubert & Roy), Arboretum offers a working environment surrounded by nature, 15 minutes by RER from Place de l'Étoile in Paris. It unfolds across a large 9-hectare inner park, a genuine arboretum with more than 1,000 remarkable trees, including a vegetable garden and a 3,200 sq m orchard. Built in cross-laminated timber (CLT), the offices offer permanent contact with nature, notably through covered terraces on every level, totalling 17,000 sq m. Adjoining the Chemin-de-l'Île park, they are surrounded by 25 hectares of green space with direct access to the banks of the Seine. The campus has numerous shops and services: 8 cafés and restaurants, a store and, within the two refurbished industrial buildings, a 1,900 sq m sports club and a meeting and offsite centre, to be operated by Comet, with an auditorium seating up to 400 people. Arboretum, whose first buildings will be delivered in late 2022 and which will welcome its first occupants from 2023, is being developed by WO2 on behalf of ICAWOOD and other institutional and family co-investors including BNP Paribas Real Estate, Primonial and Peugeot Invest.
A low-carbon complex designed for employee wellbeing
WO2 applied a systematic carbon-reduction approach across the whole project. Thanks to the use of solid timber and the construction of ten geothermal wells, which will cover 80% of heating and cooling needs, the carbon footprint will be halved compared with a traditional latest-generation concrete build. Arboretum, which holds the highest certification levels, is the largest office complex in France to be awarded the BBCA excellent (low-carbon building) label. Built in cross-laminated timber (CLT), the offices bring psychological and physiological benefits that researchers recognise as reducing stress. The buildings also break with the traditional codes of closed offices, with floor plates of up to 4,000 sq m in one span. Workspace layouts are flexible, partitioned or open, with ceiling heights of 3.10 metres at the facade.
A site steeped in history
“La Fabrique de la Connaissance”, one of the two refurbished industrial buildings, where Comet Meetings will install its meeting and conference centre, bears witness to the site's industrial past. It stands on the land where the Papeteries de la Seine paper mills operated from their creation in 1904 until 2011, printing the newspaper Le Petit Parisien. Once nicknamed “the straw-pulp building”, it has a history of its own: it saw the development of an industrial process for making paper pulp from wheat straw. Comet Meetings makes a point of giving each of its venues a soul by building on its history. This new venue, spread over four floors with seventeen meeting rooms, will be no exception.
Comet Arboretum programme
Comet Arboretum will be able to host 2 to 400 people, notably thanks to the future event room on the second floor. As in its other venues, this new Comet will offer quality catering, in tune with the seasons and with the needs of clients who want a healthy lunch break that does not drag on.
Key facts on the Comet Arboretum “La Fabrique de la Connaissance” project
- 2,300 sq m operated by Comet
- Campus architects: DREAM, Leclercq Associés, Nicolas Laisné Architectes, Hubert & Roy
- Campus design: agence Saguez
- Comet venue design: Comet Meetings
- Opening scheduled for 2023
- Campus capacity: 10,000 employees
- 9 hectares of wooded park, a 7-minute walk from Nanterre-Université station
