In a few years the image of the Harbour has changed

In a few years, the image of the Harbour has changed. The reconstructed martyred city is hoisted to the rank of witness of modernity. In summer 2005, ranking world heritage by Unesco has devoted this flipping image of the great work of Auguste Perret, the father of the reconstruction. If it forces the respect and engenders pride, this promotion in the order heritage does not to harbour a City Museum, far from it!

The port city founded by François I and fortified by Richelieu and Vauban confirms its vocation with Port 2000, great development of the estuary which is the harbour the first French port and the third European behind Rotterdam and Antwerp. In its wake, the city regains the wastelands of the historic port and multiplies the urban projects under the impetus of its Mayor, Antoine Rufenacht. After the building of the Chamber of commerce and industry developed in City entrance basin Vauban ("Les Echos" from 11/01/06), the University Library is another new milestone, also due to the Agency Dottelonde & Associates, which proclaims the found of a rejuvenated city ambition, today high of 7,000 students.

Posed on the margins of the courts of the Republic and the academic buildings, the library is a large readable volume in the collection of the new equipment in the neighbourhood of the station under processing. It occupies a box full of the checkerboard made up behind the school of music aligned on the course (Brunet & Saunier, architects) and built sports hall at the same time (Chabanne & partners, architects).

Talk about. If it's block on the parcel, the volume is hollowed and carefully double-struck on its four sides. Each façade is authorised according to the orientation and the occupation. The brick rule drawing, cutting the building in the mass. "The material was chosen in reference to the traditional architecture of the region and by analogy to the academic buildings in view, paired brick and outlined concrete banner", sets out the architect René Dottelonte, native of le Havre.

The comparison stops this similarity in appearance, construction here being industrialized, which allowed the company Quillery (Eiffage group) to hold the twenty months of construction time. The panels and pilasters that make up the facades are of precast reinforced concrete including veneer brick in bottom of formwork, more reliable than glued coatings technique. These elements reported before glazing are more or less engaged pilasters that fit the bays or form vertical visor. Rhythms and deep dig the facades of variable shadows.

On the ground floor, these prefabricated elements are cells of a gallery on the facade of entrance and the adjacent street. Construction stacks and four plateaus with subtle variations, the nose of slab marking the stratification of a white line. And if the nearby construction of the sports hall has made unnecessary horizontal sunshades added on the southern front, "these blades have the merit of fade the opposite", to console the architects.

In its external port, just stiffness, building leaves no sweat inside delirium that captured her heart. The compass vacuum of a central atrium pierces the cube full height, as"a giant of the famous Alvar Aalto vase in interior volume" footprint", recognizes Phine Weeke Dottelonde, architect associated with his father. This soft form in the heart of the box also echoed the space cultural Oscar Niemeyer, another jewel in the city of le Havre, decidedly in the dialectic of the straight and curved shape. The contrast was here, accused by the white paint that spoil the inside of the trunk of brick. The sinuous outline of trays open on the internal vacuum is underlined a strip bar for consultation of the works at the skylight above. "The cantilevered from this drawing while curves and counfercurves are taken up by steel tubular poles, grouped by three and slightly inclined on a same angle", continued the architect. A spiral staircase connecting all levels, mixing its arched not in this dance of the belly of the plateaus storied to the sky. In roofing, metal skylight striates canopy diagonal according to the most favorable orientation.

Natural convection

"Aesthetic and functional," judge Pierrette Portron, Director of the equipment, as a surprise to see this unique architecture make the program developed for the 2002 architecture competition. Functional constraints have been interpreted to the letter, with the administration offices and stores equipped with compactus (floor to 1.000 kg/m2) contained on the West side of the cube, over shipments. "To organize short circuits", specify the architects, father and daughter. "The three documentary plateaus floors are directly with their respective stores, says the Director, science and technology on the first floor, the letters and Humanities in the second, the right to the third, the ground floor and its mezzanine being reserved for the home on 500 m2 and the news, with periodicals and documentary methods, the map library, photo library and two meeting rooms."

The library has in all 900 places read on 8,000 m2, consultation terminals and multimedia posts, and holds in store 100,000 volumes out of the collections of periodicals. "Light and acoustic moods were at the heart of an HQE approach that has also favoured the natural convection of the atrium space cooling," adds the Director, at any point satisfied with comfort for a construction cost of 10 million euros excluding tax.