The Centre Administratif de Pantin, a gigantic vessel of raw concrete, washed up on the banks of the Ourcq Canal in the early 1970s, in a Paris suburb known as the “Red Belt”. Its architect, Jacques Kalisz, had not yet built anything. Sensitive to Marxist theories, he had no formal qualifications at the time. The mayor of Pantin commissioned him to design an unprecedented facility, the Cité Administrative, which was to bring together a range of administrative, social and legal services (court, social security, police station, tax office, trade union center, ANPE, morgue, kennels, etc.), all in a single location. 20 years later, the center is deserted. It was the failure of a social utopia. The “People's Palace” is nothing but an empty shell. Destroying it would have been too expensive. So it was decided to renovate it. In 2004, the building underwent a radical change of use: offices and employees gave way to dance companies and rehearsal studios. A new cultural center, the Centre National de la Danse, had absorbed a municipal facility and a political utopia. This conversion, awarded the Equerre d'Argent on completion, is the first major project by two young architects, Antoinette Robain and Claire Guieysse.