Projects / Culture

Projects / Culture

Dance and Contemporary Music Centre

Lillebonne

Redevelopment of the current music and dance centre in the former industrial buildings of SNTF

Client
Communauté de Communes Caux Vallée de Seine
Architect
Atelier Cambium + Deshoulières Jeanneau
Design team
Traces (landscape architects), Daniel Commins (acoustics), Thierry Guignard (stage designer), SIBAT (structural engineering)
Image credits
Patrick Miara
Location
Lillebonne (76), France
Programme
Refurbishment and extension of the former industrial buildings of SNTF and transformation into a music and dance centre.
Surface area
2,160m2
Construction costs
5.2M€ pre-tax
Schedule
2006 - 2015
Status
Completed
Label
High Environmental Quality

Formerly owned by the Norman Flexible Hose Company, or SNTF, the buildings that now house the current music and dance centre bear witness to the valley’s nineteenth-century industrial past. After the site’s closing in the 1980s, the Caux Vallée de Seine federation of municipalities decided to preserve this abandoned site as part of the area’s industrial heritage. The smokestack, which belongs to the city of Lillebonne, was also preserved. The architectural design uses these historical traces to define a cultural facility for inhabitants and to help develop a new image for this area. Whereas the factory was a closed space reserved to workers, the conservatory is open to the city, with a pedestrian walkway leading to the renovated buildings and newly built structures. The abstract, contemporary style of the new buildings alludes to industrial architecture, and the entire project was conceived as a dialogue between these various layers of local history that reveals the site’s gentle incline.

Plan

An east-west pedestrian walkway crosses the site, connecting the industrial vestiges (the smokestack and the main building) to the three new, oblong buildings. 

The rehabilitated structures house a reception area, a teacher’s room, and two creative workshop spaces.

The site sits on a gentle slope, which is revealed by the pedestrian walkway and the varying steepness of the new buildings.

The style and materials of these new structures represent a clear break from the historical context.

Interior

The new buildings house two dance studios, three training rooms, two collective studios for contemporary music, a percussion room, a computer-assisted music room, and a dozen rooms for individual music lessons.

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