Photo © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Photo © Philippe Ruault
Photo © Philippe Ruault
Photo © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Photo © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Photo © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Photo © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Photo © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Photo © Philippe Ruault
Photo © Philippe Ruault

Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville

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Location
Caen la Mer, France
Year
2016
Client

Communauté d’agglomération Caen La Mer

Program
Library, Total 12 700 m2 (SHON), including 325 m2 exhibition space, 350 m2 restaurant, 250m2 auditorium, 3200 m2 reading spaces, 2075m2 offices + logistics and 1900 m2 storage space

Competition
Partner: Rem Koolhaas
Project manager: Barcode Architects: Dirk Peters
Associate in charge: Clément Blanchet
Team: Cristina Ampatzidou, Joshua Boyd, Nils Christa, Marc Dahmen, Guillaume Durand, Alice Grégoire, Simon de Jong, Anthony Joyeux, Noémie Laviolle, Clément Périssé, Jos Reinders

APS & APD
Partner: Rem Koolhaas
Project manager: Dirk Peters (Barcode Architects), Francisco Martinez (APS & APD)
Associate in charge: Clément Blanchet
Team: Marek Chytil, Paul Cournet, Lionel Debs, Javier Guijarro, Didzis Jaunzems, Sangwoo Kim, Pierre Jean Le Maitre, Filippo Nanni, Clement Perisse, Maria Aller Rey, Mariano Sagasta, Giulia Scotto

PRO & DCE
Partner: Rem Koolhaas
Associate in charge: Clément Blanchet
Project leader: Francisco Martinez
Team: Merve Anil, Alicia Casals, Helena Hiriart, Phil Handley, Sangwoo Kim, Byungchan Kim, Pierre Jean Le Maitre, Maria Aller Rey, Mariano Sagasta, Giulia Scotto, Sara Sun

Construction
Partner: Chris van Duijn
Contract Manager: Francois Riollot
Project leader: Francisco Martinez
Team: Maria Aller Rey, Julien Miguel, Phelan Heinsohn, Jerome Picard, Jeanne Le Lièvre

Collaborators
Architecture: Barcode Architects, Clement Blanchet Architecture Engineering: Iosis / Egis Batiments
Sustainability & Facade: Elioth
Acoustic: RHDHV
Scenography: Ducks sceno
Renderings / moving images: ArtefactoryLab
Façade: Robert-Jan van Santen / VS-a group
Curtains: Inside Outside

Bibliothèque Alexis de Tocqueville is a public library for the metropolitan region Caen la Mer in Normandy, France. The 12,000 m2 multimedia library is located at the tip of the peninsula that extends out from the city of Caen to the English Channel. Its key position – between the city’s historic core and an area of Caen that is being developed – supports the city’s ambition for the library to become a new civic center. The library’s glass facade visually connects the adjacent park, pedestrian pathway and waterfront plaza to the interior and together with two large ground floor entrances at both sides of the building, enables a fluid interaction of the library with its surroundings. On the upper floors, the urban belvedere provides unobstructed views in all four directions.

The building’s cross-shaped design responds to the urban context, with each of the four protruding planes of the cross pointing to a landmark point in Caen: to the historical sites of the Abbaye-aux-Dames in the north and the Abbaye- aux-Hommes in the west, to the central train station in the south, and to the area of new construction in the east. At the same time, the geometry of two intersecting axes is informed by the library’s programmatic logic. The four planes, each housing a pedagogic discipline -- human sciences, science and technology, literature, and the arts -- meet in a large reading room on the first floor, to encourage maximum flow between the departments. This main library space is carved out of the center of the solid cross, defining the building’s design as an opposition between mass and void.

As a civic center where people meet and share knowledge and information, public space is at the core of the library’s design. At the entrance level on the ground floor, there is a large open space with a press kiosk and access points to an auditorium with 150 seats, an exhibition space and a restaurant with an outdoor terrace on the waterfront. The first floor contains a large variety of work and reading spaces and 120,000 documents, with physical and digital books placed side-by-side in the bookshelves. The digital extension of the physical collections, integrated within the bookshelves, is one of the new multimedia features of the library. The top floor of the library is occupied by a space for children, as well as offices and logistics. The archive and special historical collections are stored in safe and dry conditions in the concrete basement, protected from the surrounding water by an innovative waterproof membrane applied on the inner side of the concrete walls.

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