MEDIA LIBRARY ST PAUL

Saint-Paul, Reunion

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MEDIA LIBRARY ST PAUL

Saint-Paul, Reunion

Firm

PERIPHERIQUES Architectes

Type

Cultural › Cultural Center
Educational › Library

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2015

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET

$10K - 50K

Photos

Luc Boegly Photographe (4)

This media library comes as an urban answer to the need of new centrality for the Saint-Paul municipality. As it structures the « entrance » to the city, the building requires a strong image on the scale of the town. Its architecture has to transform it into a cultural as well as a visual mark.

The building is a 34m (112 ft) large and 32m (105 ft) high cube. As an aesthetique code related to the universe of books & knowledge and in order to enhance its urban landmark, its facade creates an effect of a stack of unequal book pages. These are in fact ondulated louvres layed out on the periphery of the building,

In terms of interior spaces, the ground floor hall and the multiple terraces on the superior levels are belvederes to the sea and the mountains. The cealings of the media library can also be « read », as book pages : they are composed of images in the themes of the media library's funds. Furniture, as well, is chosen in a way to create atmospheres related to the mineral and vegetable landscape of Saint-Paul.

In the garden, the planted organic shaped blocks are limited by the position of the benches, encouraging to a pleasent journey or a pause.

Main materials
Facades
Façades are composed of several complementar layers : anodised aluminium sunshades with a natural finish mounted on a steel structure… This composite enveloppe the second facade of the building, a concrete post beam structure with white metal bracings and aluminium chassis with orientable blades.

Ceilings
The media center ceilings are composed of stretched canvas printed of pictures from Michal Batory illustrations. These fabrics are stretched over metal frame suspended and removable if needed with carabiners. The metal frames integrates light lines and technical elements of ventilation and smoke extraction.

Floors
Interior floors of the media center are covered in Epoxy resin to reinforce the brightness of interior space and ensure sustainability of the coating implemented. Outdoor coating are alternating swept and bush-hammered concrete using the shape of the eyes designed on the facade. It allows to integrate the concave and convex precast concrete benches creating the islets of greenery in the same undulating design between mineral and vegetal.

Sustainability :
Natural thermal comfort required
+ Blinds over all the facade for a controlled natural ventilation
+ Wide glazed facades for optimum intake of natural light
+ Sunshades for climate protection
+ A thick “technical façade” for an acoustic protection from the public highway

- Greenery of the plot for a rainwater recovery
- A compact volume to optimize areas with double height mezzanines to provide a full ventilation of the open spaces (pressure and depression areas).

Adaptation to the seismic constraints of the site:
- A mixed structure with a concrete frame associated with front metal bracings.