Grasse, referred to as the balcony of the French Riviera, revered for its floral crops and designated as the world's perfume capital, is a quaint picturesque town adorned with various tangible and intangible cultural markers. The expressive description of the town in Patrick Süskind’s 1985 novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and its subsequent illustration on celluloid by Tom Tykwer in 2006, although set in the 18th century France, paint an emotive image of the intimate and inimitable parts of the city. At the centre of this town—that has now been accorded World Heritage status by the UNESCO for the art of perfumery birthed and practised here—and amid a densely built area populated by mediaeval buildings, lies Médiathèque Charles Nègre or Média Library Charles Nègre, conceived by Marseille-based Ivry Serres, Paris and Nancy-based Beaudouin Architectes’ Emmanuelle Beaudouin, Laurent Beaudouin and Aurelie Husson.

The stark white structure, housing a library and cultural centre, seeks to revive this tightly packed heritage core with a fresh and novel space for the local community to host and become a part of various kinds of educational, cultural and engaging events and activities. “The building is inserted between public buildings and the urban fabric and uses, with a modern vision, part of the traditional language,” reads an excerpt from the press release. Although disparate in materiality and colour, the structure bears spatial semblance to the heftiness that both stone and stucco structures in the region embody. A vertical turret-like protrusion on the rear end of the structure further serves as a reminder of mediaeval towers.

While the 11th-century city, with cathedrals and mansions dating back to the 13th, 17th and 18th centuries, has deteriorated over time, so much so that various ‘unsafe’ structures were demolished in the 1950s to expand public spaces, various archaic spaces and structures have also been preserved and rehabilitated. Further, an active urban renewal project that began in 2008 has helped revitalise the area by restructuring dilapidated housing blocks, reallocating the ground floors of apartment buildings for cultural and commercial purposes and revising business and social ties to rejuvenate the city. Média Library Charles Nègre, located in the centre of the city and accessible via narrow steep alleys from four different directions, serves as a tangible location for the city’s rich historicity and cultural heritage to come to the fore, while also marking the beginning of a new cultural epoch.

The site of Média Library Charles Nègre was fairly complex, with its contoured ground and steep slopes, which led to the architects opening up access to the structure from several floor levels. Further, the site, surrounded by historic housing, with some heritage residential buildings on site, was reachable only via narrow streets dating back to the mediaeval era. While the heritage structures were either merged with the new structure or were kept in mind when the volume and span of the media library were being determined, the accessibility to this structure was redone to accommodate fire services by cutting out a passageway through the existing buildings. This path, leading up to Place du Caporal Jean Vercueil, also became the route for the transportation of the building materials and equipment to the site.

A large covered reservoir on site, dating back to the 1950s, also posed challenges since this span could not support the building’s load. The presence of the reservoir and the proximal heritage buildings led the architects to properly formulate a volume that does not disturb or exacerbate the current weaknesses of the site. One can, hence, find a dramatically cantilevered structure, which conceals the lower floors from easy visibility. With proximal houses swerving right past the site, the architects cleverly devised a structure that kinks and bends in response to the shape of the site and the span of the structures nearby. “The media library of Grasse is inspired by the character of the urban structure of Grasse and creates tensions and proximities between the buildings,” the architects share. Further, to protect the reservoir, a subterranean concrete retaining wall, extending into the basement, was built in front of it to avoid its collapse.

Due to the aforementioned constraints, the design and construction of the structure had to be remodulated, halted and rethought many times. This was further magnified by the designation of this area as an endangered heritage site where the possibility of encountering new findings often came up and led to a change in the original floor plans, budgets and materials. Talking about the structural challenges faced during the construction, Laurent concisely states, “The particular difficulties were the fragility of the existing buildings, the need to build the foundations on piles, the obligation to carry out archaeological excavations at a depth of six metres, the need to overlook an existing building which contains the water tank of the city to enable the areas requested in the programme to be created, protection of the building from heat, protection from earthquake risks, etc.”

With the site measuring only 10,000 square feet, the architects were supposed to design for a 40,000 square-foot programme of spaces. This required the architects to stretch underneath to integrate a basement, which houses the HVAC system. Further, the density of the structure is balanced by the two plazas located along the northeast and northwest faces. While one of the floors opens up to the former, the latter serves as the frontier for the main entrance.

The heritage houses integrated into the volume of the media library house public spaces and back-of-house necessities. Since most of the ancillary spaces are housed in the rear part of the building that stretches linearly on a plan, a rectilinear portion of the building, which also faces the main plaza, can easily accommodate the key specifications of the plan.

The first floor, made accessible via the historic housing on Rue Charles-Nègre, leads to Droite Hall via the south-east face of the building. The Droite hall serves as a common foyer that hosts an exhibition space and further leads to an auditorium that can seat around 100 people and a library for children up to the age of six.

The second floor, accessible via two entrances on the northeast side, via Place du Caporal Jean Vercueil, accommodates a double-height gallery which hosts temporary exhibitions. This floor also houses a smaller gallery space dedicated to the local photographer Charles Nègre, after whom the structure is named. Referring to the historic buildings accommodated on site, the architects share, “An open arcade in an existing building improves the passage to Place Vercueil. This square is intended for the installation of restaurants and allows access for service vehicles.”

The northwest face of Média Library Charles Nègre—in front of which the reservoir roof lies—houses the main entrance to the building, which opens on the third floor. It can be accessed via the pedestrian crossing placed on this water reservoir that supplies the city. “The corbelling marks the entrance to the media library from the square by crossing the water mirror. Going up the pedestrian Rue de la Lauve on the side of the media library, you reach, above the reservoir, the water garden which marks the main entrance to the media library. The top of the tank is partially covered by a water mirror,” reads the description from the press release. The building access on the third floor leads up to the public entrance and lobby. The architects placed the main entrance across the expansive plaza to include the urban amphitheatre—that constitutes the Place Morel located in the upper part—as part of the larger programming of the media library. Additionally, it also serves as an incentive to use Rue de la Lauve which runs along the south-west face of the structure as a pedestrian axis in the heart of the city.

“Part of the public arrives on the site from the top of the city, due to the presence of a public car park. Rue de la Lauve is accompanied by a suspended ramp, perceived as an extension of the street inside the media library. The ramp is a promenade that encourages the visitor to take a leisurely step, it allows a passage between the two levels as a transition,” the architects share.

The fourth floor of the concrete architecture primarily houses the library and reading area and the fifth floor comprises the library, terrace and cafeteria. The library design comprises expansive spaces that run unencumbered save for the striated light rays falling through the gap between the colonnades and the skylight, the barrel vault ceiling breaking up the long spans visually and the internal play with levels, staircases, openings and niches, all of which frame unique views. Both these floors, jutting forward from the third floor, partially levitate over the reservoir. Part of the facade on the fourth and fifth floors, covered by glass walls, visually connects the indoor and outdoor spaces. This visual connection to the plaza and beyond helps in alleviating the indoor congestion produced as a result of the dense programming and the low-height floors. While one can enjoy a view of the front plaza and the vicinal heritage structures from within the library during the day, this visual access reverses during evenings and at night. Further, the rest of the structure is enveloped in glass, too. However, to avoid direct sunlight into the building and to ensure the privacy of the indoors, these glass walls are hidden behind a series of white prefabricated concrete claustra. “The theme of the claustra is related to the Provençal tradition, extended on a large scale,” the architects added.

Citing another reason behind the usage of concrete, Laurent shares, “Everything is built in concrete to preserve freshness inside the building and respond to seismic constraints.” The slender columns covering the facade of the structure are reinforced with steel so that they can withstand seismic forces. The proximity of the concrete claustra or colonnettes to each other renders the facade of the structure an illusion of continuity. At night, however, the artificial lights from within the building shine through.

Ergo, the view of the white structure and with it, its illuminated indoors, which in some portions are visible from the outdoors and in other parts, causate a halo effect, rightfully serves as a landmark even as the entire city slips into a state of stupor after dusk.

Project Details

Name: Média Library Charles Nègre
Location: Grasse, France
Client: City of Grasse
Architects: Ivry Serres, Emmanuelle Beaudouin, Laurent Beaudouin, Aurelie Husson
Design Team: Charles Signe, René Maury, Yuning Song, Raphael Cayre, Christophe  Thierry, Noémie Gaineau, Jonathan Coppa, Nazim Belblidia, Nelly Schwarts
Structural Engineer: Jean-Marc Weil C&E-ingénierie
Equipmental engineer: INEX
Built Area: 4400 square meters
Year of Completion: 2022