ACBA, Agglomération Côte Basque Adour

Bayonne, France

Add To Collection

Other Projects by GARDERA-D

Add To Collection

Surfrider Foundation europe Headquarters

ACBA, Agglomération Côte Basque Adour

Bayonne, France

Firm

GARDERA-D

Type

Commercial › Office
Government + Health › Community Center

YEAR

2013

The « ACBA» is an administrative building housing facilities for political and economical territory developing in south of France.
The competition brief for the extension of the 80's existing building raised the following topics:
Provide the administration with extra working spaces
Offer a new and enlarged, fully equipped, auditorium for boardrooms and conferences.
Re-enforce the dynamism of the “ACBA” through a contemporary extension.
The organization of the existing building was characterized by the articulation of different services all around a main octagonal shaped “atrium” space.
This disposition presented the inconvenient of an “introverted” building, turned on itself and lacking visual communication with the surrounding outside.
Particularly, an existing park, south of the building, was entirely left unused and invisible at the back of the building.
The project aims to restore a “breathing” dialog with the outside: it first shifts the gravity center of the existing “atrium” towards the park, then open up the all existing façade towards the park to plug in the new extension.
The extension is composed of a slightly slopped auditorium, for 120 persons, topped with an open space for 40 workers.
The extension “head” housing the auditorium is derived from the shape of the existing atrium and placed in the very middle of the park, in an existing clearing surrounded by trees.
The shape of the created building is dictated by the positioning of the existing trees, thus deforming the volume to fit the construction in the clearing without having to destroy any trees.
By respecting the actual topography of the site, the extension “digs” into the existing ground and the auditorium volume in surrounded by a continuous strip of glass opening on the nature at eye level .
The auditorium's ceiling shape is directly derived from an acoustical diagram of the space.