The building designed by Dominique Coulon & associés had a theme of connection, as they had to connect numerous spaces with diverse functions. A wide-ranging programme with a variety of uses, with a 250-seat theatre and its dressing rooms, two dance studios, rooms dedicated to languages and music, an exhibition space, rooms for teenagers and activities for parents and children, workshops for string instruments and plastic arts, a learning kitchen, a bar and, finally, an administrative centre.
A programme that pays particular attention to the quality of open collective spaces that encourage meeting between users while facilitating a rich architectural experience. To do this, they placed the entrance hall of the building on the curve of the street, so that the two parts of the building, following the shape of the plot, would join together in an open space that also offered views of the adjacent vegetation through glass windows.
Supported by materials such as limestone, the façade gives weight and character to the building while reflecting the intertwined arrangement of the spaces inside. The large windows that cover the façade of the building bathe the interior spaces in light, while generating intersecting views and unique atmospheres.
Cultural Centre in Bourg-la-Reine by Dominique Coulon & associés. Photograph by Eugeni Pons.
Project description by Dominique Coulon & associés
The Cultural Centre in Bourg-la-Reine lies on a narrow plot right next to a high embankment upon which a regional trainline runs. This plot is L-shaped and leads out onto a small road hidden away. To build a public centre, such a plot seemed far from ideal.
So building an edifice on this plot called for a design with which the structure could stand out as a public building and find a legitimate place between the vegetation-covered embankment and the neighbouring homes.
The watchword in this programme was connection. Indeed, we had to relate many spaces with highly varied purposes to each other. These spaces included a 250-seater theatre and its dressing rooms, two dance studios, rooms devoted to languages and music, an exhibition space, rooms for adolescents and activities for parents and children, workshops for stringed instruments and visual arts, a learning kitchen, a bar and, lastly, an administrative hub.
For us, a programme as rich and as quality-oriented as this one had to find spatial expression worthy of it.
So we paid particular attention to the quality of the collective spaces. In doing so, we placed the building’s entrance hall in the curve of the road so that the edifice’s two sections, following the plot’s shape, would join in an open space that would encourage encounters while offering views of the adjacent vegetation through glazing.
The open spaces implicitly join the different rooms together to make them relate to each other better. The strangeness of the plot’s geometry prompted us to create an arrangement of oblique forms and folds that intertwine.
The spaces interweave into each other and the elevations reflect this. Inside, a vast open space expands through three levels of the building, multiplying double heights, viewpoints, walkways and suspended spaces. This unifying area is like a point of reference at the heart of the project. The hall’s triple height captures sunlight, in spite of the embankment. It offers large-framed vistas of the sky and trees from its hallways, its upstairs walkways and its first-floor meet-up space.
The scale of the windows across the facade give the building its public edifice status. These windows create hollows in the limestone structure and put the project’s spatial and programmatic wealth on display. The huge windows reveal the programme’s generosity and suggest a project bathed in natural light and embellished with vegetation, crisscrossing views and unique atmospheres.
