Atelier RAUM

Name of work in English
Pierres Blanches Cultural Centre

Name of work in original language
Espace culturel des Pierres Blanches

Placement
Shortlisted

Prize year
2022

Year completed
2019 (Year began 2018)

Authors
Thomas Durand (1977 France); Benjamin Boré (1982 France); Julien Perraud (1982 France)

Collaborators
Engineering: Serba , Isocrate Coordination: CMB44 Acoustical: SerdB Others: Laurence Leroy Landscape architect: d'Ici Là
Program
Culture
Labels
Culture Centre

Total area
8467 m2

Usable floor area
1230 m2

Client
Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau 's city

Client Type
public

Map
LatLng: (47.18879378704495, -1.710820198059082)

Neither in the center of the town, nor really on its outskirts, regarding the urban development of the northern part of the street Pierres blanches, the location of the project offers the opportunity to reinforce the development of the city by asserting the public character of this facilities and equipment. The integration of the center in the project’s site aims to answer the following objectives: • Reinforce the landscape continuity between the North and South • Allow, through the implementation of the project and its relations to outdoor spaces, the acoustic protection of the neighborhood • Offer a place-identity of this new associative and cultural center by promoting the development of the sports center • Create on the opportunity provided by the existing landscape: a quality green space on the South part of the plot A new polarity of public life. The implementation of the project near the wooded area offer a high quality of use to the outdoor spaces of the activities room. The treatment of the interface between the street and the cultural center is thought in the continuity of the existing, perpendicular to the street, plots in order to avoid ‘excluding’ the project by too many successive visual plans : 4 strips of landscaping clearly connect the project to the street offering, each one of them, a specific use. - To the west, along the walkway: the created green space offers generously a continuity with the wooded area - Face to the main entrance: the forecourt, stretched towards the street provides easier access for pedestrians / cyclists avoiding dangerous circulation in the car park. - To the East, a parking area is created near the sports fields. The dispositon of the project in the plot and the landscaping of the outdoor spaces aim at supporting a diversity of uses by offering a new public space of quality and by supporting a future evolution of the sports center and the whole area to the east part of Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau. The contemporaneity of an architectural writing, sober and playful. Raw and sustainable materials (terracotta, concrete, wood) minimize the costs of maintenance but are mainly employed as a tool for proposing a sober and timeless contemporary architecture. The quality of these materials structures the ambient environment, both inside and outside and fully participates in making singular the project and its atmosphere : the sobriety of the noble materials gives to all spaces the solemn character needed for certain uses but also allows to highlight the quality of space assets. The major reception areas (hall, reception hall, meeting room, music room) benefit from very high ceilings and generous openings that frame the landscape, and allows to witness the important porosities that are created between indoor spaces and outdoor spaces of differentiated qualities in use. These two architectural instruments, form and material experimentations, participate fully in the proposal of a coherent volumetric heterogeneity, which offers in a monolithic volume plural interpretations of the functions and the uses of the center putting it in a larger geographical context.