The major extension of the Val-Bélair library offers the possibility to strengthen its role in an existing civic pole that has very little structure. The existing building offers a warm atmosphere and occupies a strategic site in the city that is still characterised by its introversion and its difficulty to dialogue with the immediate landscape and urban environment.
The project proposes to keep the identity and the organizational characteristics of the building and to interlink with it a new volume more permeable to light, to urban dialogue and to a dynamic interrelation with its environment.
The research for symbiosis between the functional program, a suitable atmosphere for each activity and the characteristics of the interior and exterior public spaces has preceded the research for an architectural expression. If the latter wishes to be sober and unifying with respect to the existing building, it also wishes to offer a quality of spaces and a variety of enriching experiences for library users as well as passers-by. The available budgets point to the use of economic construction systems and environmentally sustainable procedures, without jeopardizing climatic control.
(From competitor's text)
(Unofficial automated translation)
This project stood out mainly for its overall balance and the professionalism of its response to several of the important questions posed by the competition. In fact, it offers real potential for a complete response to the program's prerogatives, even if it remains to be refined in several respects. The close proximity of the library and its activities to boulevard Pie-XI, the generous opening onto Place de Ville park (also very visible from the boulevard), the skilful integration of the artwork at the hinge of these two façades, and the generous clearance preserved between the library and L'Odyssée school were identified as important urban qualities of this project, capable of making it a true civic hub in the city. On the other hand, the increased distance between the library and the school accentuates the problem of the link for students, which in its current formulation is probably the most ambiguous and least convincing of all the benefits. It needs to be reviewed. The simple, pragmatic and orderly layout of the plan offers an efficient distribution of functions, ease of operation and surveillance, and a considerable degree of versatility. The common lobby is well positioned and configured, although more generous than expected. The double access to the animation room creates a control problem that will be easy to rectify. The perspectives reveal a competent composition of spaces but suggest less reassuring commercial atmospheres inside. On the outside, certain relationships between old and new remain to be resolved. The extension seems to dominate what appears to be the existing, and the combination of the vocabularies of the two does not yet, in the jury's opinion, form a harmonious whole. Moreover, the façade, described as "pastoral", seemed to some rather public in its expression, while the street façade was judged too "muted" by others, calling for an adjustment of the project's discourse and/or formal vocabulary. Some members of the jury deplored the timid reuse of architectural elements borrowed from projects previously produced by the firm, without any apparent evolution or adaptation to the particular conditions of this one, which paradoxically reassured others about the foreseeable quality of the product. Following the recommendations of the technical commission, this project could be streamlined by lowering the overall height of the extension, sticking more closely to the program's surface areas, and designing details that are simple to realize, which the jury agrees with.
(From jury report)
(Unofficial automated translation)
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