Troyes M?diath?que
Troyes, France
Du Besset-Lyon architectes

A historic collection of books is wrapped in glass and gold, creating a modern jewel box for the civic realm

© Phillipe Ruault

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By Claire Downey

The French Revolution toppled the monarchy, but it also attacked another rich and powerful institution—the Church. In 1789, the revolutionary authorities gathered thousands of rare books and manuscripts, mainly from religious libraries, and assembled them in one collection in the city of Troyes. But the collection never had its own building until July 2002, when the Troyes Médiathèque opened its doors.

Troyes is a city with an industrial past, rich in medieval architecture, and with a growing university population. For the Médiathèque, the municipality wanted a welcoming environment that would attract a diverse group of users. To do this, it applied new technologies to old sources, such as scanning 12th-century manuscripts to make them available as digital files. It also instituted an open-shelf policy for contemporary books and allowed people to take some titles out of the building (which is not the norm at French libraries).

When they won the design competition in 1997, architects Du Besset and Lyon were already known for a library they had designed in Orléans, as well as the headquarters for Le Monde in Paris. The Troyes project is part of a new development zone, on the site of what had been an old train station and, later, a high school. Today, the existing building is being turned into a cultural center, with the library abutting it on one side. The library provides space for the rare-book collection, exhibitions, reading rooms, a newspaper kiosk, and closed areas for book conservation, storage, and offices.

Because the library has only three visible facades and suffers from a main entrance located off the parking lot of a McDonalds restaurant, the architects chose to create a building that is largely transparent, where interiors and exteriors flow together.

Beyond the glass facade, a series of bold elements—including a gold ceiling, a pink staircase, a historic book room, and a yellow corridor—define an interior urban landscape. At the heart of this cultural village is a dramatically elongated rare-book room where volumes are displayed on wooden shelves dating to the 17th century. Glazed corridors and open-stack areas wrap around the old book collection, with expansive glass walls that encourage people to push open doors and explore new works. The architects employed a palette of pastel colors to define spaces, even extending the concept to window walls where colored film is sandwiched between glass layers.

Surrounded by glass, the main reading room on the top floor offers views of the city and the moody, often gray, sky. An undulating gold ceiling grid floating above the floor casts a warm light over stacks and reading areas and evokes metaphors of the region’s champagne industry. Made of gold-anodized aluminum, it is more crumpled than curved in places, adding to its reflectivity. Looking up, visitors can see through the grille to the lights above and through a glass roof to the sky beyond. The architects designed the building so the gold ceiling would project out under the roof to form a canopy over the entry, an element that is just now being completed.

See the February 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Médiathèque de l’Agglomération Troyenne

Location:
Troyes, France

Gross square footage:
116,000 sq ft

Total construction cost:
$12 Million

Owner:
Communaut? d?Agglomm?ration Troyenne

Architect:
Du Besset-Lyon architectes
30 rue Ligner 75020 Paris
Tèl : 33 (0)1 43 67 16 75
Fax : 33 (0)1 43 67 00 16
e-mail : email@dubesset-lyon.com
www.dubesset-lyon.com