Restaurant Universitaire Mabillon

In 1952, the first university restaurant in Paris opened at the corner of Rue Mabillon and Rue Clément, in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Sixty years later, the facility serves more than 1,650 meals daily. The educational building design led by the higher education architect aims to upgrade the building’s acoustic and thermal performance while improving the quality of reception and dining conditions for students. A façade composed of chestnut timber screens gives the building its distinctive identity, while a ground-floor café contributes to the site’s urban vitality.

Beyond bringing the back-of-house kitchen and service areas located at the basement level into compliance with current standards of hygiene and comfort, the education building design also seeks to increase seating capacity and diversify the dining offer for students. Dining areas are distributed across the upper floors, retaining the continuous ribbon windows characteristic of the original building. The design encourages visual engagement with the Parisian context, from high counters positioned along the glazing to wall-mounted mirrors reflecting the surrounding façades.

At ground level, opening onto Rue Mabillon and Rue Clément, the educational building design introduces a café conceived as an active urban interface within a controlled budget. It responds to the needs of student life by accommodating social interaction and cultural programming, including screenings, lectures and exhibitions displayed along the walls.

The façades have been entirely refurbished to meet contemporary thermal regulations and to significantly improve summer comfort, previously unaddressed. In a cost-efficient approach, the campus architect introduced external sun-shading devices, constructed from chestnut poles with minimal detailing. Positioned at the upper sections of the glazing, they filter daylight, while at the lower levels they clad the concrete spandrels, reinforcing the building’s horizontal expression. This intervention further strengthens the identity of the CROUS Mabillon, now a recognizable landmark for students in the Latin Quarter.