Once Made for Mail, It’s Now for Your Golden Years

It’s a coveted sunny afternoon in Brest, a port city in the northwest of France. As lunchtime hits, a stream of local office workers and residents fill the city’s central square, Place de la Liberté. Overlooking the Rue de Siam leading up to the square is the old Brest post office, an imposing granite-clad postwar building that once served as headquarters to the region’s mail service. Today, though, following an €8.5 million renovation designed by Paris firm Chatillon Architectes, this former office building has been transformed into Les Jardins d’Arcadie, a light-filled, community-oriented senior residence and a testament to the potential of adaptive reuse.

The old Brest post office had a hearty footprint and prime location, but had phased out operations over the years. Seeking to make better use of the building, in 2018, La Poste Immobilier, the real-estate arm of the French postal service, put out a call to developers. Paris developer Acapace won the contract and in turn enlisted Chatillon to help convert the 63,000-square-foot building into an ambitious 93-unit senior housing project. Founded by François Chatillon in 1986, the firm specializes in transforming existing structures. "The first thing we try to understand is what we have with regards to the city, the architecture, the construction, the spaces, the orientation—everything, really," Simon Chatillon, the project’s chief architect, says of the family-led firm’s research-driven approach.