Medaitheque Andrée Chedid
Prix spécial du jury & Prix Régional de la construction bois 2014
The building will be developed over a surface area of 900 m2 and will consist of two parts, an old part – the Tiberghien textile factory’s concierge service along with its surrounding wall – and an extension that will lean on these historic elements.
The new building, leaning against the surrounding renovated wall to the west, and against the old concierge service to the north-east, will consist of three volumes, where the roofs, treated as a continuous surface, will ripple to bring the natural light needed for the different spaces nestled in the heart of the media library. The eastern and western walls will form a set of perforated structures, opening the view to the outside while protecting it from the passer-by’s looks. The attention will be paid to the entrance’s treatment that will be done in an instinctive and evident way, through the concierge service, preserved yet carved, sliced and widely opened onto the courtyard. The ground floor will host the public, since the first floor is reserved for the media library internal services.
Like a Mineral Sculpture
From an industrial past that is still very present in the collective memory – the old Tiberghien spinning – arise three white wings from the media library. Their structures, similar to an organic matter, match the ground shape, spread out, climb and impose to the passers-by view, as if to catch both their eye and the light. The contrast between the two successive vocations of the place is deliberately highly marked by a double architecture, contemporary and traditional, leaning on each others, coming together and handing over to each others. This building, resolutely looking to the future, solicits by its remarkable elevations, closed from the north and the south, opened in mesh from the east and the west, providing an “inside out” form suggesting the impalpable link between the inner and outer life.
Interior: A Place of Cultures and Lights
In this open and liberated space, the furniture has been custom designed to fully participate in the identification of areas for the sake of the architectural consistency. Predominance of white and wood for adults, colors for the younger ones.
The light participates in the interior especially with the cells that allow a precise and directed input on selected areas: the children’s corner, the reading corner space ... At the heart of the media library space, it is through the roof undulations that the light penetrates.
The synthetic flooring consists of carpet tiles: a carpet made of free-form tiles which allows great flexibility in patterns creation, and breaks with the rigid structure usually proposed. The interlinked parts generate non repetitive graphics, specific to different areas, and form a visual echo to the organic structure of the media library.
The graphic honeycomb facades evoke from the outside a hive of knowledge. From the inside of the media library, the facades’ structure offers an interpretation that would divide the city’s reality into pixels. It is a unique place, a traversing volume where the changes in the ceiling’s height prioritize, creating the spaces’ intimacy.
The constraint of the field’s difference in levels has been bypassed to give birth to a terraced room welcoming the spectacles and projections. From the outside, the fender that shelters it and develops on the court reinforces the idea of a set where the environment and buildings are set up.
