Pontivy Medialibrary

The media library is pointing at three directions: East, West and South. These are making up the three images and views of the building.

East, the city; West, the canal: two opposite points, drawing a bridge from the city to the nature and inviting the visitor to get away from the noise and the movement. The building is offering a peaceful view and a quiet atmosphere to concentrate and read.

South: the outside space stretches the interior volumes. A screen made out of steel blades creates a partition between the outside and the inside world: this enables to preserve calm and serenity. It also offers the visitor a feeling of protection and helps to keep concentrated.

The building is composed of different layers. The first layer, made of thin crossbars, protects from the sun and the outside perturbations. It brings intimacy to the building designed for reading and concentrating. The second one, a glass box, shelters the public spaces, the lobby and the reading areas. The third one, opaque, encloses the store rooms, the “treasure” of the building, the technical areas and staff rooms. 

The light penetrates the building from everywhere. When it is filtered, it animates the space with playful contrasts between shadow and light. The building seems light and ethereal thanks to the fragmentation of the structure. The structure is made of many small elements creating rhythms, frames, filters and different angles of vision depending on the location of the visitor in the space: this creates a kinetic vision of the construction.

A series of sixty-two PRS steel crossbars, covered by thermo lacquered metal sheet with clouded effect, are attached to the “strong box”. The cross bars are lined up across the outside and inside spaces of the library. A mezzanine, extended over the whole length of the building, is entirely suspended to high beams by a succession of very thin steel bars. The two “pebbles” lying on the floor, unique enclosed spaces of the building are made of a metal structure covered by a thixotropic concrete shell. 

Unusual and attracting, round and soft like pebbles, the “magic boxes” are shelters where the visitor could withdraw, think and use their imagination. The strong box- treasury chest is a concrete box protecting the archives from the sunlight, enclosing sanitation and staff rooms. Along the reading area, a long wall of blinds, made of prefabricated white panels, enables to vary the lighting of the premises. Open and light, the reading spaces and lobbies are spread on the whole length of the glass box.

Pontivy Medialibrary, Pontivy, France
Program: media library and public archives
Architects: Opus 5 architectes
Structural engineer: Batiserf
Fluids engineer: Louis Cholet
Acoustic engineer: Impedance
Economist Bureau: Michel Forgue
Client: Ville de Pontivy
Area: 2700 sqm
Completion: September 2013