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Architects: Opus 5 architectes
- Area: 2700 m²
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Luc Boegly, Bruno Decaris
Text description provided by the architects. The media library is pointing at three directions: East, West and South. These make up the three images and views of the building.
To the East, the city; To the West, the canal: two opposite points, drawing a bridge from the city to the nature and inviting the visitor to get away from the noise and the movement. The building offers a peaceful view and a quiet atmosphere to concentrate and read. To the South: the outside space stretches the interior volumes.
A screen made out of steel blades creates a partition between the outside and the inside world: this enables to preserve calm and serenity. It also offers the visitor a feeling of protection and helps to keep concentrated.
Russian doll system
The building is composed of different layers. The first layer, made of thin crossbars, protects from the sun and the outside perturbations. It brings intimacy to the building designed for reading and concentrating. The second layer, a glass box, shelters the public spaces, the lobby and the reading areas. The third one, opaque, encloses the store rooms, the 'treasure' of the building, the technical areas and staff rooms.
The building and the light
The light penetrates the building from everywhere. When it is filtered, it animates the space with playful contrasts between shadow and light.
Compactness and lightness
The building seems light and ethereal thanks to the fragmentation of the structure. The structure is made of many small elements creating rhythms, frames, filters and different angles of vision depending on the location of the visitor in the space: this creates a kinetic vision of the construction.
Construction system
A series of sixty-two steel crossbars, covered by thermo lacquered metal sheet with clouded effect, are attached to the "strong box". The cross bars are lined up across the outside and inside spaces of the library.
A mezzanine, extended over the whole length of the building, is entirely suspended to high beams by a succession of very thin steel bars.
The two "pebbles" lying on the floor, unique enclosed spaces of the building are made of a metal structure covered by a thixotropic concrete shell. The « magic boxes », animation and story-telling
Unusual and attracting, round and soft like pebbles, they are shelters where the visitor can withdraw, think and use their imagination.
The strong box- treasury chest
Concrete box protecting the archives from the sunlight, enclosing sanitation and staff rooms. Along the reading area, a long wall of blinds, made of prefabricated white panels, enables to vary the lighting of the premises. The reading spaces and lobby. Open and light, they are spread on the whole length of the glass box.
