Location: Courcelles-lès-Lens, France.

Architect: ZITA Architectes.

The project is located in Courcelles-lès-Lens, a town of 7,500 inhabitants in the Hauts-de-France mining area. Located in the town center, the urban fabric is essentially composed of terraced and semi-detached houses in R+1, thus creating a homogeneity of the built templates. 200 m2 and its car park. The site also gives access to the municipal village hall at the back of the plot. The project hosts a third-place media library: • a media library itself of 731 m2, • an educational cooking workshop of 46 m2, • an auditorium for 150 people of 152 m2, • additional premises (offices, reserves, storage, staff premises) and technical premises of 191 m2, • a shared patio of 110 m2, • outdoor spaces (courtyards, parking lots, gardens) of 6,753 m2. The project therefore aims to transform a “temple of consumption” (the existing commercial building) into a “cathedral of culture”; not in the sense of replacing one by the other, but by taking the best of both. that it makes available and the freedom of development that it offers by the absence of any load-bearing wall or post over great distances. It was necessary to provide what is necessary for the proper functioning of a public facility: light, views to the outside, comfort, quality of spaces and a strong identity. The structure of the existing building cannot accept the weight of an expensive thermal renovation, only a few masonry walls and the low slab are preserved. A new project is created in this enclosure and on the basis of a volumetric device which refers to the templates of the two-storey houses present around the site: a system of shells is put in place in order to optimize the internal acoustics (vast form egg box) and be visible beyond the existing walls to reveal and transfigure a new identity to the building. The shells are all identical; they are just pivoted relative to each other so that the glazed sections placed on the highest sides provide natural ventilation, bring natural light to the heart of the media library and provide varied views of the sky, the trees, the church tower, etc. The project is also inspired by the qualities of the initial commercial building, namely the large surface area it makes available and the freedom of development it offers by the absence of any load-bearing element over great distances. In this sense, the metal frame carries the entire roof, including 750 m2 without intermediate carriers, thus ensuring great flexibility of use and possible programmatic reversibility. The network of natural gutters between the shells feeds metal gargoyles which stage the flow of rainwater to the surrounding green spaces.

Photo credit: Nicolas da Silva Lucas.