A symbol of renewal for Avignon, France
In Avignon, Jakob+MacFarlane has transformed a dated 1980s library In a bourgeois icon for the future, without deleting all of the past. The newly opened Madeleine Renaud and the Jean-Louis Barault Library, who are now known as the canopy, is both one renovation and a reinvention, complete with A Roof Metaphor and a structural nod in the digital age.
Originally designed in 1985 by the architects Jacques Prunis and Béatrice Douine, the library was exactly in the French The district of Saint-Chamand of the city-neglect than in the past few decades. Jakob+MacFarlanes Intervention, part of the French Nouveau program National de Renouvellement Urbain (NPNRU), replaces the building as a symbol for the rebirth of the community. The library is now more direct connected to the city center via a new tram line.
images © Roland Halbe
Architecture as a treetop's banach
With its revision of the Avignon library, Jakob+MacFarlane's design concept focuses on the mighty metaphor of a tree. In accordance with this concept, the structure offers protection, light, energy and growth. The high -flying central staircase – its flanks with bookshelves – is reminiscent of a trunk that rises, while the extensive new roof acts as a literary canopy. It was built from devastable wood (CLT) and embedded with solar collectors, offers both shadows and sustainable energy, while it celebrates the amazing sunlight of the southern France.
While the tree metaphor offers a conceptual anchor, its physical knowledge is more than just symbolic. The new CLT roof floats over the original concrete mass, drastically brightens the presence of the building and announces its new identity with Kühner architectural clarity. Compared to the low weight of the original structure, the new canopy is higher, air-fermented and reacts more to her surroundings from Sowohl climatic and culturally. It is a strong urban gesture that moves the library back to the city.
The building is robbed by all non -structural elements, while the original concrete scaffolding is held out, celebrated and isolated from the inside. The result is a raw but refined shell that bridges old and new, without using mimicry. It is an honest gesture that respects the history of the building and at the same time makes contemporary terms legible.
Jakob+MacFarlane transforms a library of the 1980s in Avignon
Jakob+MacFarlane plans to develop an era
Today's libraries are no longer just book depotories, and the Avignon library under Jakob+MacFarlanes direction includes this shift. There are physical volumes with digital interfaces here, and rooms are designed in such a way that they house as many podcasts and panels as paperback books. This new hybrid character supports the developing functions of public libraries – debates, cinema, coffee and community. Jakob+MacFarlane's design recognizes that people not only read differently, but also gather differently.
Inside, the new heart of the library is a light fountain – freshly cut into the volume of the building in order to invite daylight and differentiate reading zones. In this central emptiness, Jakob+MacFarlane has placed adaptable sculptural furniture from their own design. These reading areas seduce visitors to stay through a book, keep the plug and to leaf through, but they are flexible enough to record everything that comes next: a poetry slam, a zoom conference or a citizen meeting. An adjacent auditorium that is shared with the city further increases the role of the library as an open house for cultural life in Avignon.
The renovated library is part of a wider city extension plan for the Saint-Chamand district
A central light fountain brings natural light to new reading areas that were designed by the architects
A design concept inspired by Baum symbolizes protection, growth and community