Brought to book - library renovation for Lycee Alphonse-Daudet secondary school in Nimes, France

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 1995 by Paul Joubert

This little library and resource centre for a secondary school in Nimes is an instructive example of how an existing building can be colonised and transformed by a series of sensitively judged interventions.

The Lycee Alphonse-Daudet is a large secondary school in Nimes occupying an agglomeration of nineteenth-century buildings. Since 1991 it has been gradually restructured by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, under the forward looking auspices of the Languedoc Roussillon Regional Council. The principal phase of work involved transferring a resource centre and reference library into a renovated building, envisaged as a pivotal centre for meetings, culture and exchanges. A further, more recent stage involved the creation of a concert hall, computer and audio-visual rooms as well as a language laboratory.

The new library and study facilities from the first phase occupy a long rectangular volume, divided both horizontally and vertically by a series of new planar insertions. Wilmotte uses raw concrete partition walls to divide the ground floor into cellular spaces; three of these walls are extruded vertically to structure the upper floor and mezzanine above. At ground level, the walls are partially perforated by glass and metal sliding screens, introducing sensations of lightness and transparency. On the upper levels, the concrete planes are solid buffers to the fluidity of the mezzanine study area, with a new staircase springing balletically off the central wall.

Within this framework, Wilmotte is sensitive to the varied needs of library users, skilfully managing to create many different kinds of places and atmospheres -- nooks for private study, large group work tables, reading stands on the balcony rails for casual browsing and assorted exhibition areas. A different light is associated with each space, whether from large windows at ground floor level, narrow upper floor windows or through the partly glazed roof. The atmosphere is intimate and studious, the scale resoundingly and reassuringly human. Materials are understated and refined, predominatly blonde wood and spindly metal, as a foil to the robust earthiness of the original timber trusses, whose rhythmic march down the long space is now fully exposed. The vaguely aerodynamic furniture is signature Wilmotte, developed from an earlier design for the Languedoc Roussillon council especially for this project.