Serero Architects shared with us the Saint-Hilaire Du-Harcouët Media Center, a 300-seat performance hall with a foyer, 4 art and music studios, 1 restaurant, a rehearsal hall, administrative offices and associated technical spaces. They received first prize in a restricted competition and it’s expected to be completed by 2012.
More images and architect’s description after the break.
Saint-Hilaire-Du-Harcouët’s new Media Center sets in an exceptional historical and urban context. We conceived it as an extension of the surrounding urban morphology. We designed the building as low as possible to respect the historical context and partially integrated it in the ground. This strategy allows to requalify the plaza recently realized by the city at the level of the South Garden. The low terrace, which was used only as a space of circulation is now a place of interaction between the media library and the park. This low volume is aligned with the houses at the bottom of the church’s hill. The project implements local materials, such as the ocre schist stone, of the same type than the one of the church. The stretched out windows of the project are inspired by the singular proportions and the flaring of the windows of the church, which was taken as a reference building for our project. South side, the media center is conceived as a long window giving an open view on the landscape, on the church and the buildings around.
The building structure is constituted by an on site cast concrete walls covered with freestanding stones. The media center is for us a place where the natural light has an essential role and is placed in the center of the spaces designed. It contributes to create a place of exchange, turned to other disciplines and different cultures. This project is opened to the city thanks to wide surfaces glazed on the ground floor. The first floor is also conceived and implanted to take the most advantage of natural energies and limit its dependence to the fossil fuels.
The spaces of the media center are directly opened on their immediate environment and protected by a double glass skin covered with a metallic screen which pattern is inspired by the rosette of the church. This device allows to create a pleasant place to read and work. Our project stages a work on the thickness of facades (distance between “brise-soleil “and glazed wall, spacing of blades) with a work on overhangs of the facade so as to create a porosity, a series of space of rich transitions between the inside and the outside of the building.
Design Team: David Serero, Fanny Lenoble, Yoichi Ozawa, Amandine Quillent, Fabrice Zaini Client: City of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët Floor Area: 800 m ² Engineers: Beterem ingénierie
