Critical infrastructures: designing the essentials

Critical infrastructures are the systems, buildings, and facilities essential to the proper functioning of our society. They ensure the continuity of vital services: energy, healthcare, justice, defense, communication, transport, data… They have a direct impact on national security, economic stability, and public health.

Sensitive Sites, Strategic Challenges

Air base, data center, military campus, cutting-edge laboratory, courthouse, ministry… These places are often confidential, sometimes high-risk, always essential. They concentrate major challenges:

Confidentiality and security: managing flows, protecting data, and anticipating crisis scenarios.
Continuous operation: 24/7, without interruption.
Contamination control: for laboratories and sensitive areas governed by strict protocols.
Durability and resilience: reducing environmental footprint, modular and scalable design.
Interoperability: seamless integration of technical, digital, and human systems.
Technical building management: implementing complex HVAC and electrical systems.

Between Technical Performance, Security, and Sustainability

Critical infrastructures demand an architectural approach at the crossroads of technical performance, security, and sustainability. They require a specific methodology to ensure confidentiality and information security. Their technical challenges call for interdisciplinarity and collaborative work. Our augmented architecture model, operating as an open platform and drawing on multiple areas of expertise, enables us to tackle highly complex projects while remaining agile. While we pay close attention to the specific needs of critical infrastructures, we never lose sight of designing highly contextualized, user-focused, and sustainable projects. We activate every lever at our disposal to minimize the environmental impact of these essential structures.

Critical Infrastructures: Designing the Essentials

Expertise Forged by Experience

For over 30 years, we have collaborated with public, scientific, industrial, and defense stakeholders. This culture of critical projects allows us to design reliable, high-performing, and sustainable environments aligned with contemporary challenges such as energy transition and technological sovereignty. Here is a selection of emblematic projects led by Patriarche and its entities:

Naval Group: construction of an industrial and office site dedicated to the development of drone activities, autonomous systems, and underwater weapons.
New CHU Nantes Hospital: execution management of Europe’s largest hospital construction project. Design team: Art and Build Architectes, Pargade Architectes, Artelia, Signes Paysages.
Biotech Development Center: biotechnology development center dedicated to research and drug production.
CHOR (Centre Hospitalier Ouest Réunion): elevation and construction of a building to house a consultation service, day hospital, dialysis unit, medical control centers, and a 60-bed unit.
Dassault Aviation: extension of the Dassault Aviation industrial site in Mérignac to accommodate a new research center.
Nanterre Courthouse: energy renovation of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Nanterre.
Ecotox: in partnership with Sesterce, conversion of an industrial-office hub into an AI campus including a data center and a school.

Alongside these major achievements, many other projects remain confidential due to their strategic nature.

Photo credits

©Romuald Nicolas, ©Nicolas Grosmond, ©Vincent Le Gallic, ©DassaultAviation-C.Cosmao, ©Denis_Caviglia, ©Adobestock - Production Perig, ©Adobestock - Gorodenkoff