22 BAYEUX MEDIA LIBRARY, NORMANDY
functional as well as holistic potential of external areas.
As a result of the highly transparent
design, each space within the building has copious amounts of light, a mix of artificial light from LED tubes overhead, borrowed light from the central patio, and “softened” light coming in from the main north facade thanks to a brise soleil design. This helps the building offer “great clarity and legibility of interior space,” commented the architects.
External form
The client had what the architects described as a “fairly fixed” brief for the project, in terms of the fact that there was a “very precise building footprint to respect to meet budget requirements.” Within that overall constraint, the key words behind the design, for client as well as the architect, were “space, light, transparency and simplicity.” However, as architect David Serero explains, his firm decided to depart from the client’s original intention of a higher building to accommodate its various needs, to something more low-profile, and elegant. “We placed all of the programme on a single floor, instead of three floors as asked in the brief.”
The project is almost completely transparent thanks to its mainly glazed facades and the absence of partitions across its 2,500 m2
floor plan. Only three spaces
within the building have opaque cladding – in Caen stone – the reception, plus an entertainment room, and a quiet study space. The structure is an “innovative steel frame with very skinny steel square tubes of 14 x 14 cm,” on a 5 metre grid, says Serero. The building’s envelope opens up in other
places, including glazed bays to the east, south and west facades – which are equipped with motorised roller blinds. The entrance, to the north east, opens onto a forecourt, an “entrance square” combining paving and grassed areas in a similar way to the adjacent military cemetery to assist pedestrians crossing the road. The green roof, “conceived as a fifth facade,” includes skylights which help with ventilation in summer thanks to motorised opening, as well as adding further light to the interior. There is a much smaller upper storey containing quieter spaces, plus a roof terrace, however overall the building presents a chiefly rectilinear profile. The white uprights across the length of the transparent facades give the building something of the look of a giant bookcase from a distance, however one key design
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