Media Library St Paul
MEDIA LIBRARY ST PAUL
Peripheriques Architects
LOCATION
Chaussée Royale, 97460 Saint Paul, Ile de la Réunion, France
PHOTOGRAPHS
Luc Boegly
AREA
4567.0 sqm
ACOUSTIC RESEARCH DEPARTMENT
Peutz & Associés
CATEGORY
Library
DESIGN TEAM
Emmanuelle Marin, David Trottin, Anne-Françoise Jumeau
SITE MANAGER
Egis
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
SEDRE for Saint-Paul city
LANDSCAPE DESIGNER
Zone Up
ARTIST
Michel Batory
3D PICTURES
L’autre Image
PROJECT MANAGER
Juliette Bonnamy
- With : Charlotte Lefebvre, Alfredo Luvison, Claire Oiry, Emily Murphy, Timothée Kazmierczak, Pierre Tignon, Karine Bergevin, Camille Isaac-Dognin, Charline Lalanne, Guillaume Guilbert
Text description provided by architect.
The new media library structures “the gateway” of Saint-Paul city. Its location choice comes as an urban answer to the need of a strong identity in the landscape scale.
This building has to become a cultural landmark, through information and training, as well as a visual one through its architecture.
Located between sea and mountain, the building shape is a 34m side cube. The idea of an urban landmark is enhanced by a strong aesthetic vocabulary of the volume related to the ”book” media: façades are structured by a stack of wavy lines reminiscent of the book pages pattern.
Those “pages” are solar shading systems vibrating around the construction. It generates a warm filtered light, maintaining an optimum thermal comfort.
This is reinforced by façades made of louvres window blades which creates openings to naturally ventilate the building.
In this book, some pages opens like eyes to create chapters, that structures the building :
The lobby of the media center, the garden, and the several terraces spread over the top levels molds some lookouts on the Indian Ocean landscape.
As book illustrations, the ceilings of the levels reveals some pictures by Michal Batory about medias and Reunion’s heritage.
On the floor, some planted islets designed like organic shapes are surrounded by benches, that invites to take a break.
The garden places the media center into a pleasant journey in the district.
