Conversion of the old Victor Hugo covered market into a sports facility by architects Marjan Hessamfar & Joe Vérons.

The Alice Milliat Gymnasium

With the Alice Milliat Gymnasium project, Bordeaux City Council wanted to offer the neighbourhood a new high-quality sports facility and shops, while enlivening the existing façades of the building, a vast complex built in 1962 comprising a market, sports centre and car park on the Cours Victor Hugo. Although it had become a symbol of the city’s contemporary architectural heritage thanks to the character of its design and its monumental presence, it suffered from a lack of visual clarity when viewed from the Cours Victor Hugo and from a lack of connection between the interior of the building and the street. The planned conversion of the former market was seen as a clear opportunity to take account of the building’s immediate surroundings.

Highlighting the beauty of the building

The proposal put forward by Marjan Hessamfar & Joe Vérons had three main aims: to bring more natural light into the heart of the building; to make the sports facility more visible, while remaining sympathetic to the original architectural design; and to reclaim the public space immediately in front of the building.
In the gap created by the demolition of the existing market and shops, the architects decided to install a glass box. The fragility of this entirely glazed structure is in marked contrast to the stark concrete architecture of the existing building and highlights its beauty.
The attention paid to the design of the glass box, in particular the use of ultra-clear glass and refined materials such as brass and wood, gives the gymnasium a touch of sophistication. The black strip, actually a shadowgap that channels rainwater along the façade, provides an elegant finishing touch to the design of the glass box.

Sports areas

A multi-purpose sports hall, a dojo, and a dance and fitness studio occupy the entire ground floor. Special attention has been paid throughout to the lighting, transparency and spaciousness of the sports areas.
The spacious double-height sports hall directly behind the reception area occupies a central position at the heart of the building. It opens onto the reception area and receives abundant natural light thanks to the mesh façades and the windows in the upper section of the lateral dividing walls, which are sound-proofed and thermally insulated.
On either side of the multi-purpose hall, the dojo and the dance and fitness studio have the same volume and the same thermal and sound insulation systems. Their façades overlooking the street bring in abundant natural light. To leave as much room as possible for the sports facilities, the changing rooms are in the basement.

Signage

The choice of the colour blue for the floor forms an ideal background for signage that reflects the identity of the facility, symbolised by directional signs inspired by a sports track, which curves along the walls and continues on the floor, clearly showing the layout of the sports areas and changing rooms. The design of the stairs and the brass used on the steps provide a sense of continuity with the rest of the building.

Urban continuity

The façade forms part and parcel of the redesigned pedestrian experience in this protected area of Bordeaux. The main façade features shops intended to re-energise the street. The position of the entrance to the sports hall, with its sliding glass doors, in the centre of the façade on the Cours Victor Hugo, provides a strong sense of continuity from one section to the next. During the day, the central position of the main entrance makes it easy to identify, and by night the glass box becomes perfectly smooth again, appearing to passers-by as a transparent block of great simplicity nestling under the imposing concrete structure.
Following on from the shops, the sports facility has a similar façade, but the fact that it is set back from the Cours Victor Hugo gives it a greater feeling of privacy. The one-way window film on the glazed side façades, featuring a logo also used as part of the signage, gives users the privacy they need while allowing them to see outside. The façade of the car park above with its iconic car retains its identity, familiar to residents of Bordeaux. The project also includes two shops designed to be highly visible, occupying almost the entire length of the main façade (with the exception of the lobby) and a little less than a quarter of the side façades. The shop frontages are all glass, providing a sense of visual continuity with the façades.