Description

Until 2016, Bordeaux’s city archives were housed in the listed Hôtel de Ragueneau. The 17th century building in the historic city centre was in desperate need of renovation, to the extent that the old stucco ceilings of the reading room needed underpinning with scaffolding. In addition, the archives had outgrown the available space. In 2010, a competition for a new building was won by the Ghent architecture office Robbrecht en Daem. The new site lies in a new urban quarter to the right of the Garonne and includes a former goods warehouse from 1852 that dates from the beginnings of the French state railway. Some of the old railway tracks can still be seen in the outdoor areas. The architects inserted their building into the façade, adding a striking addition to the gabled roof and a low side wing, which houses the admin offices, a small lecture theatre, an exhibition hall and the entrance. Visitors enter the actual archive via a tapering passageway, while staff on the first floor can cross via a bridge, from which one has a view into the reading room.The raised section is covered with a zinc standing seam roof, with translucent polyester sections on some of the north-facing surfaces. The fact that the original roof had been destroyed in a fire afforded the architects greater design freedom. In response, the architects developed an unusual cross-section that allows the three uppermost “boxes” of the archive to be stacked in a staggered arrangement.
The building also needed to provide enough space for the reading room and for the access corridors on the south side. The latter is an open channel that extends up to the roof. Here, and in the reading room, the stepped arrangement of the boxes and folds of the underside of the roof produce impressively tall spaces, despite the overall sparseness of the finishes. In keeping with their function, the stacks are little more than flat rooms with typical storage facilities such as movable shelving. Altogether, the archives provide a total of 18 kilometres of shelving.
The reading room itself is a tall and imposing full-height space with unusual dimensions but also structural clarity. It is defined by the staggered sides of four exposed concrete cubes stacked on top of each other up to the roof. Each of these is divided into four sections in which the archived items are stored. The carpet is bright blue, while the inner surface of the external wall is clad with precisely spaced slender timber battens. Cut into this wall of Douglas fire battens are panoramic windows with bronze-coloured aluminium frames, which afford a good view of the entrance forecourt. Topping the wall, opposite the uppermost concrete cubes of the archive, is a row of translucent polyester glazing extending the length of the buildings, which allows diffuse light to fall into the building. The result is a sublime interior, even though the hall has few public visitors and accordingly only 40 reading places along the row of windows. Visitors are always aware of the concrete archive boxes, and this at once imposing and yet also carefully designed space therefore effectively conveys an impression of the size of the archive.

Originally published in Bauwelt 15.2017, pp. 38-41, abridged and edited for Building Types Online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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