Les Forges - Knowledge Centre for Innovation , Saint-Étienne/ Frankreich

 

 

COMPLETED IN SEPTEMBER 2022

 

This building is one of the main wings of the former Saint-Etienne arms factory. This industrial estate was built in 1864. It covers an area of twelve hectares to the north of the city centre. Designed in the spirit of the rationalist architecture of the 18th century, such as Claude Nicolas Ledoux's saltworks or the Grand-Hornu near Mons, the factory is an industrial and military "palace" composed of white stone and red brick. It embodies the aesthetic ideal of an era intoxicated by the fortunes generated by the industrial revolution.

It is also an emblematic site in the history of the city, whose conversion into a creative district hosts prestigious programmes such as the Cité du Design and university branches as well as the Centre des Savoirs pour l'Innovation (CSI).

 

Here, the meeting of the industrial architectural heritage with the world of culture and knowledge of today has undeniably generated a « genius loci ».

 

"Les Forges" is the building that forms the eastern facade of the former industrial city. The neoclassical building was a 135 m long workshop that was 22 m high. The decline of the factory led to its final closure in 1989. The entire site was abandoned to the wonderful fate of wasteland before being listed as a historical monument in 2006. The forge is one of the elements that will have waited the longest for its reconversion. It endured almost 30 years of abandonment and even burned down in part. All that remained of it were four deteriorated facades, the main one of which was gutted out.

 

The CSI was set as close as possible to the remains of the Forges workshop. Because the program was larger than the existing building, a third of the requested areas exceeded its capable volumes; a third was to submerge above its bourgeois cornices.

 

The architecture has sought a fragile and exciting balance between a heritage listed as a historical monument and a contemporary style. The attic has been designed on the borders of minimalism, where this major artistic trend pushes the picturesque referent to the limit of abstraction. This referent is drawn from the industrial functionalism of the 19th century.

It was a time when natural light was a must and the facades of the workshops vied with each other to capture it. It was a time when Romanticism was slowly moving towards modernity. With this in mind, the extension building volume was designed as a glass abstraction with a timeless pre-weathered metal. The object is materialised by a systematic repetition of vertical bands alternating glass and metal. These graphic lines follow one another in an inflexible rhythm and run across the four façades of the project.

Seen from the front, the rusty steel strips hide from view and give a transparent massiveness. Seen in profile, the steel blades quickly hide the thin openings and give the impression of opaque massiveness. Thus, those who walk along this façade will see it become more opaque the further they look.

The six bays of arcades, formerly destroyed in the central part after the building was abandoned, have been reconstituted in this spirit of atemporal abstraction. Here, the steel blades are densified on the traces of the stone arches to evoke their disappeared contours.

Three levels have been developed in the envelope of the former workshop. The ground floor is dedicated to the Innovation Centre, which consists of new workshops that house high-tech machines for applied research. The first floor is divided between a Learning Center (resource centre), a business incubator and innovative teaching. Finally, the top floor is entirely occupied by a teaching centre. The interior architecture is sober and bright. The muffled ambiences combine whites and matt minerals with raw concrete. The agora sets the scene for this theme on a triple height. The roof is covered with zinc and oriented in an impluvium to make it disappear into the urban landscape and to reduce the depth of the skylights intended to naturally light the central axis of the floors. No unsightly machines such as air handling units were placed on this roof. All these elements have been integrated into the built volumes. Finally, the structural stone of the remains was restored and integrated into the overall static scheme. A singular complex, interposing a wood-frame wall and concrete porticos to the stone, was designed especially for this operation.

 

The CSI is intended to bring together on the same campus all the interdisciplinary training and research skills of the Jean Monnet University around Innovation. With the redeployment of the teaching and research activities of the Faculty of Science and Technology to the Forges Building, the CSI will accommodate nearly 900 people, students, doctoral students, teachers, researchers and administrative staff. They will join the forces already present on the Manufacture Campus.

A true place of hybridization and synergies, the CSI is dedicated to Innovation, creating the conditions for collaboration within a unique ecosystem integrating high-level training, research activities of international influence, a great capacity for experimentation and a strong entrepreneurial culture. This innovation dynamic will extend beyond the university to the entire region.

The CSI is developing three functional poles: a resource and documentation centre (Learning Center), a teaching centre and an innovation centre. These three poles are articulated around a public area called the agora.

 

The agora, the real heart of the project, is located in the historical East-West axis of the Manufacture in the centre of the Forges Building. The Agora, which crosses the building, provides access to the Knowledge Centre via Rue du Docteur Rémy Annino and Rue Claudius Ravachol. Benefiting from a triple and double height, it is the federating space of the project serving all the project's polarities.

On the ground floor, the agora includes reception, conviviality, snacking, exhibition in the form of a large open space.

On the first floor, an open suspended footbridge crosses the volume and forms the upper agora serving the Learning Center, creating a strong visual link between the two floors.

 

The innovation cluster is made up of four main areas: the technology platforms, the project hotel, the D'Factory and the incubator.

Access to this cluster can be made directly from the agora on the ground floor, and also benefits from secondary accesses to the north and south of the site opposite the Campus. The majority of the innovation centre is located on the ground floor, thus providing a showcase for the building, taking advantage of the building's volume, which echoes the site's industrial past.

The technological platforms, independent and modular cells, are mixed research/training premises reproducing a more or less technological environment.

The project hotel is similar in use to the technological platforms, for limited periods of time, without the need for industrial or laboratory-type infrastructure. It is also located on the ground floor in the continuity of the technological platforms. The four project cells are adjoined so that they can be modulated.

The D'Factory (innovation factory) provides premises conducive to creativity with the aim of offering a complete pathway from ideation to pre-industrialisation (Fab Lab).

The USE'In incubator is located on the first floor south above the D'factory, with which it is linked, and houses young innovative companies in the form of modular tertiary offices.

 

The whole of the resources and documentary services centre is located on a single plateau on the first floor. Visible from the upper agora, it plays an important role in the attractiveness of the Centre des Savoirs. Located at the top of the arcades, it benefits from the historic setting of the Forges building, while being largely lit by natural light. The resource centre functions as a large, open-plan "Learning Centre", where convivial spaces, work areas, shelving, etc., are located side by side.

The Learning Center is intended to be a place for living and socialising as well as for training and academic work. As a support for teaching and research, it welcomes all CSI and Campus Manufacture users in differentiated work spaces equipped with comfortable designer furniture.

The Learning Centre is organised into three areas

- a reception area with a reception point, automatic machines, a lounge, lockers and a training room;

- a central area forming a free table top with a central space dedicated to the collections, a silent work area with large tables and a "whispered" work area with more relaxed seating allowing for one or more people to work together;

- an area dedicated to co-working and group work made up of four rooms, each with its own furniture and atmosphere, a large modular space.

 

The teaching area located on the ground floor takes advantage of the elevation of the Forges building in relation to its existing walls. The teaching rooms are therefore well lit. Inside, the wide central circulation is punctuated by the skylights on the first floor, and benefits from natural light through them. These openings also create visual links between levels and activities.

The teaching centre is composed of twenty thirty-seat classrooms (six of which are equipped with movable partitions, thus offering double rooms), two hundred-seat amphitheatres, a cartography room and two computer rooms.

 

An innovative teaching centre is located on the first floor, between the Agora and the Incubator. It has an open co-working space of over 200 m2 and four co-working spaces.

 

 

UNIVERSITÉ JEAN MONNET ET EPASE

K ARCHITECTURES (Aline Royer, project manager architect) with, AIA LIFE DESIGNERS (Technical, economic and environmental design office), ITAC (acoustician)

INNOVATION CENTRE, RESOURCES AND DOCUMENTARY SERVICES CENTRE, TEACHING CENTRE, APPLIED RESEARCH WORKSHOPS

BUDGET 16,2M€

SURFACES 7 235m²

STONE, WOOD, CONCRETE, METAL

BUDGET €16.2M

SURFACE AREA 7 235m²

CALENDAR 2015/2022

Curtain walls and Corten facades: BLANCHET / Renovation of the facades and shell: CHAZELLE / Zinc roofing: UTB / Quartz concrete screeds and tiling: DI CESARE / Learning Center carpet and linoleum: AUBONNET / Wood fibre ceilings: DECOSTAFF

Artistic light installation on the façade: TRAFIK

Curtain walls: Schüco FWS 50 OB / Zinc: ElZinc Lava / Screen-printed glazing: AGC / Agora lighting: NEMO Studio - Linescape / Ceilings: Organic range by Knauff / Carpet: EGE Highline / Linoleum: marmoleum decibel Forbo / Tiles: MOSA Fuze, Tiles: MOSA Scenes / Tubular lighting: SFEL

Distributor: Silvera

Shelves and tables: Iduna / Library table lamps: KOS lighting / Chairs: MAXIMUM Gravene / Armchairs: SITLAND Cell

Miscellaneous: Lapalma, Howe, Enea, Domitalia, Verpan, Bla station, Marelli, Prooff, Zanotta, Riva, Arper