// BBC BUSINESS NEWS — FINANZA
From Paris to DC - why offices are being turned into apartments
Le Diamant office building is to close and be converted into apartments
When Roland Cubin walks you round what will eventually be a new Parisian apartment you have to use your imagination.
"Here you will be in the kitchen, and here is the bathroom," says the deputy CEO of French real estate company Groupama Immobilier.
It all sounds appealing, an upmarket flat in the west of Paris, but presently the space doesn't look like one at all. That's because it's currently a corner of one floor of a nine-storey office building called Le Diamant, where 1,800 people work.
Groupama Immobilier intends to convert the entire building into apartments. It should be the first of many such office-to-apartments conversions in the surrounding area.
We are in La Défense, the purpose-built, business district of the French capital, where the city has congregated its modern skyscrapers.
Mirroring a similar trend in places such as New York, Washington DC and London; Paris La Défense, the public development authority that runs the area, has unveiled plans to turn up to a fifth of the office buildings into housing.
Cubin leads us into what is currently a conference room in the centre of the building. It has no windows, which is indicative of a big challenge when turning offices into apartments – what to do with the large amount of space in the middle of every floor that doesn't get any natural light.
"There won't be any rooms there. Just access," says Roland Cubin, in reference to lifts and stairs.
Other issues include the need for more plumbing, and ceilings that can be too low.