GREAT BUILDING, located Avenue de la Grande Armée in Paris French multinational 9,200sqm 580sqm 3 pharmaceutical company of office space of outdoor space Certifications targeted headquartered including terraces (BREEAM Excellent, HQE Excellent, in Paris and a rooftop Wired Certified Gold) Stéphanie Bensimon: Sanofi is a very innovative SB: Quality is a major strategic objective for many tenant that wants to realize its own vision for the tenants and the pandemic is reinforcing that trend. space with a very high level of specification. When For me, both these projects show that our strategy they came on board in Paris, we had already pre- of repositioning obsolete buildings to the highest sold the Avenue de la Grande Armée building to modern standards is the right one. They also show an insurance company with an agreed delivery how important it is to be very agile and responsive date and technical specifications. Adapting the to the tenant’s needs. We know we cannot approach designs very rapidly to achieve Sanofi’s goals projects as a pure developer – we must walk in the was a challenge for the teams in Paris, and I know tenant’s shoes. Despite the challenges the pandemic there was also a lot of discussion with our team in created, Iwas surprised at how the construction Germany about what Sanofi wanted to do with the companies adapted and how we were able to limit Elisa building. delays and manage the additional design work that needed to be done. JA: I must admit we are a very demanding tenant. We want to create bespoke office spaces that fit our JA: What we really appreciated is the professionalism vision for Sanofi and its people. We are trying to of the teams we worked with. Very often around transform the buildings so that they become places the world we deal with landlords who are totally of socialization, collaboration, and innovation. We inflexible. They are just selling square meters, while are leveraging the 3 dimensions of the building to we are looking for people with the capacity to develop an impressive but also very cozy working adapt. In Paris and Berlin, we worked with teams environment, where people could re-energize and who were open for discussion and were prepared promote a sense of purpose. We don’t know exactly to listen. what the future will look like for offices, but the quality and efficiency of the space are much more SB: We both set the bar very high on these projects. important than quantity. Sanofi invested a lot of time and effort with a strong technical team to make sure they achieved their We are progressively reducing the amount of space goals. Ithink we all learned a lot from working we use, although we will certainly need a central together. meeting place in future, and it must be top quality. If people come to the office, it will be for good reasons, so we need to create environments they feel proud of and where comfort and digital tech are fully embedded in the user experience. 2020 ACTIVITY REPORT 111