The location chosen for the new Maison du Livre et du Patrimoine is located on the boundary of the natural Valley dug by the Flon, former course of reclaimed water to the industrial age before becoming a space abandoned in the heart of the city. The spirit of the place still reflected in steep wooded slope that delimits the field to the South.
This hillside is the first striking element of the site, but there is a second while also determining who is the cover of the land by the road viaduct. The implementation of civil engineering infrastructure illustrates the urban problem of the connection between the lower town and upper town, and offers a very specific spatial potential, which determines the identity of the new equipment. The space under the deck resulting from this trough topography is conducive to the creation of an interiority, to the emergence of a peaceful and serene place under the vibrations of the city. Our proposal threesome a pocket of nature and greenery in the heart of the road system and creates a melting pot of silence and light in the center of the city.
The project of "building - bridge', to fit into its environment, must preserve, or even accentuate the landscape character of the North hillside providing a cross-sectional view North-South throughout the building. Fully glazed on its long side, it loses its massiveness to become an urban open window on nature. The topography of the garden extends inside the building as a 'earthflow' playful which spreads on the floor of the R-1, became the reference level of the building.
Inside, the impact of the supporting structure of the building is reduced as possible to staging the amplitude of space resulting in civil engineering work and release a unit space under the viaduct. The massive concrete of the viaduct pillars are sheathed by light frames steel forming vertical holders of the library which are associated with the vertical circulations. These nuclei are wrapped glass and form high columns of translucent light who distribute different free plateaux, which seem to be registered in the slope of the embankment, and thus give the sensation of floating in a vacuum.
The book House becomes a place of silence and light, which contrasts with the reality of the perceptible Street on the north side and the more rough, Rocky garden to the South.