Hugues Fontenas Architectes Trouville-sur-mer public library

client

City of Trouville-sur-Mer

architect

Hugues Fontenas

associate architect

Isabelle Latappy

engineering

TEC.CO (structure), BETHAC (mechanics).

cost surveyor

MDETC

built area

775 m²

cost

1 685 000 € HT

calendar

2007 – 2014

design

Transform an austere city-centre bank building with historical façades into a public library.
The interior volumes are completely liberated and a new mezzanine floor added. Existing windows are discretely altered to increase natural lighting in the public areas.
The service s and circulation areas are squeezed into a technical ribbon running the entire length of the building. This is clad with contrasting walls made of steel grid and coloured or reflective glass panels, which cut through the building and outside become a sign of the building’s new function.

photographs

George Dupin

Exceeding expectations
Develop each project following a re-evaluation of both programme and anticipated results. Reply beyond the expectations of the programme. The principal architectural objective is to be found in the research of added, unexpected qualities.

Evolving surfaces
Architecture to be also conceived as terrains to be occupied in the future by still uncertain or improbable uses. Architecture as “reverse ruins” in an upturned archaeology that facilitates or suggests inevitable transformations. Therefore, when it might be tempting to be just spectacular, never hesitate to be simple and complex.

Comforts
Pay particular attention to all the complexity factors – functional, technical, regulatory, economic, aesthetic – and use them as a basis for future comforts. Distinguish structures, enclosures or equipment to consider temporal aspects of the project in a prospect of reversibility and diversity of uses.

Artificiality
Advocate and assert the profound artificiality, the non-naturalness of architecture. Conceive architecture in a grey ecology without naivety and in creative phase with the contradictions of our environment.

Aspirations
Associate production and research in resonance with an analysis of actual facts. Remain independent in thought to stimulate, guide and increase the pertinence of a project. Propose reality as an aspiration to do differently.

Founded in 2006, the office has developed its activity mainly in the field of cultural facilities with a strong interest and expertise in programmes related to the exhibition and preservation of all types of collections, from archaeology to contemporary art. Hugues Fontenas also teaches and conducts research on themes strongly connected to work in the office.