In the midst of death we are in life. Such might be the motto for the Centquatre, an intriguing new Parisian arts centre that has flourished in a deeply macabre setting.

At 104 rue d’Aubervilliers, in the French capital’s northern reaches, is an address that has channelled many Parisians into eternal rest. Until 1997, it was the site of the Municipal Funeral Services, a citywide provider of last rites that could rival any theatre for props, ritual and tragedy. Built in 1873 on the site of an abattoir, the Pompes Funèbres acted as a garage for the city’s hearses, as well as a factory for its burial accessories. In the early 20th century, it employed 1,400 people and dispatched 27,000 coffins every year.

Now, after years of disuse, the building has been revived, in a sensitive reawakening of a beautiful piece of 19th-century architecture too far from the reaches of central Paris to have been properly noticed before.

Graceful: the glass roof brings to mind the Musée d’Orsay

When a law breaking the state monopoly on funeral services was passed in 1993, the Muncipal undertakers were in effect served an eviction notice. Roger Madec, mayor of the 19th arrondissement, began the process of listing the building’s façades so that they would not fall victim to property developers. Bertrand Delanoë, the city’s mayor, joined the cause to put the space to good use. In 2003, the architectural firm Atelier Novembre won the contract to turn this house of the dead into a vital part of Paris’s arts calendar.

The plans were unabashedly ambitious: a multidisciplinary arts centre, a studio space for budding artists, an international platform for artistic collaboration, a forum for community life, a new opportunity for small businesses.

The Centquatre would provide northern Paris with the artistic powerhouse it had hitherto lacked: it would have a bigger budget and a correspondingly greater influence than smaller spaces such as the nearby Plateau gallery, but it would be more tightly focused on the arts than La Villette, its much more sprawling neighbour, which caters to music, cinema, art, science and entertainment.

The Centquatre, as one approaches from the Bassin de La Villette, is almost like a folly, its placid exterior giving no clue as to what lies within. Inside, there is a palpable emptiness, as if the building is still a stranger to its new form. Photographs of the construction work by Stèphane Couturier document the messy wrenching of industrial layers to clear the space for a new blueprint. Like Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, the Centquatre is organised round a large, high-ceilinged expanse smoothed over with glossy concrete; its graceful glass roof also brings to mind the Musée d’Orsay. Couturier’s detail-rich scenes have a scope and stillness that echo Andreas Gursky but, mindful of this building’s ghosts, he has grafted on faint traces of earlier images – the building as it was ripped apart – so that his photos remain at an unfixed point in the past.

These fascinating photos, commissioned and owned by the Centquatre, are transitory too: they will eventually be superseded by other temporary exhibits. The Centquatre is such a generous space, it seems to invite a large-scale sculpture or installation, but it also works well for the Centquatre’s other mission, which is to bring together different parts of the local community by hosting plant- and book-swapping sessions and other social events.

Ground-floor galleries running along the side of the main hall house small displays, shops and a brightly customised children’s playpen, while the upper galleries contain a set of studios for aspiring artists, who apply for residencies via the Centquatre’s website. True to the centre’s multidisciplinary brief, the projects are highly diverse – cinema, installation art, rap, theatre. On some weekends, visits to these studios can be arranged, accessed through eerily quiet corridors lit by purple neon lights – so quiet you can hear the tubes buzzing.

What kind of art will the Centquatre produce? So far the response is original if slightly hesitant, but will surely grow bolder as the centre gains momentum (it opened formally about a year ago).

The Centquatre’s directors, Robert Cantarella and Frédéric Fisbach, have acknowledged the challenge posed by the unusual space they are trying to develop – not only its history but also its response to the changing seasons. The cold concrete, the metal doors, the endless staircases can produce a chill air, though again this is softened by the careful planting of trees around its borders.

A permanent exhibition by the designer Adrien Rovero uses a cool wit to respond to the Centquatre’s morgue-like echoes: in a simulacrum of a visitor shop, printed t-shirts – the arm-holes sewn up – hang on rails; postcards are centimetres thick, too heavy to send. Rovero seems to hint at the limitations of material possessions, useless in the afterlife. To play on people’s deep curiosity about death seems an obvious thing to do here, but it is nevertheless a rich game, worthy of more time.