Community of Communes of the Valley of Herault

“Invitation to social interaction, respect of the heritage”.
The landscape characteristics related to the site of installation of this new equipment are quite specific. “The Causse” by its strong presence qualifies and characterizes the site. It offers a local inscription of the landscape. The concept of “local” is neither harmful nor degrading for the elements to which it applies. On the contrary it means identifying the qualities of a place and to respect its own rhythm. These are the identities which offer di-versity to landscapes and a specific quality of life. Then let us cultivate these differences and seek what makes a place that exceptional. Let us make rediscover it even to those who practice it daily.

The challenge here was to set up a new building on a site strongly marked by a landscape of agricultural cultures. We are to be located at the entrance of the town of Gignac, and the stake consisted in positioning on this parcel more than a simple building, a real urban unit. It must offer jobs but also propose a space to live for the people who are taken along to practice it. From its scale (plot of land of 10.638 m2) and its localization, a particular at-tention was brought to its insertion in the site. This new unit doesn't come to disturb the environment visually, but it marks its territory.
In this direction, it seems fundamental to us that the architecture, receptacle of the activities and urban develop-ment, resulted from the place, the site, the territory and not from any conqueror act. In this place that is not what matters, no need of huge formal gesticulation when the surrounding landscape offers so many possibilities, and when the culture, the history of these grounds are so sublimely anchored in the ground.

Our role is to make emerge, to reveal and not to impose some flattering forms on any perspective on the res-trictive sights. In order for this unit to give the feeling to have always existed, as if we just had to raise a veil to reveal it. But let us mislead here, this attitude is not by no means a will of non-architecture. Because we are quite conscious of the stake and the investment which represents such a project for the Community of Communes of the Valley of Hérault and the town of Gignac. We do not seek to build ”pseudo-local“ because modernity occurs daily. It is with a humble observation of this territory associated to an ambitious prospect with a future, such as the Community of Communes, that we worked. To register this equipment in the site by respecting its environment and to offer an urban scale to it allowing a conviviality to the place, such are our objectives.

A village around a place.
Our project is based in the deep respect of the local heritage, including the architectural and the landscape. We wish to magnify, to emphasize and to register it in own future. To be respect the heritage that does not mean we must build like what already exists, because would be to betray it, and produce pastiches. We wish on the con-trary to use the essence of what makes this huge heritage, to build this new space with a resolute contemporary hand-writing.

Thus we put emphasize on: the establishment, the orientation, the general organization of this space, the mate-rials used, and eventually the landscape structure.

A village around a place. This concept inspired our projects. It is conceived like a whole of houses ordered around a central garden, as village around a place. The new buildings however do not reproduce the picturesque sur-rounding houses; on the other hand, they are fixed according to the same volumetric logic which allows a better insertion. The cut-out of the various programmatic entities is simple and of modest size answering to the homoge-neity of the surrounding landscape. Each batch has an independent access thus onto the garden. This distribution confers on each one autonomy and identity. In addition, they are served to the back by a roadway system with single direction presenting 2 entrances. The principal one since DR. 32 and by the draille street of the castle of Camalce.

Circulations of vehicles are channelled and rejected to the periphery of the site thus releasing the very heart dedicated to the pedestrians. This choice of circulation also allows a security of the access and minimizes the roadway systems.

A particular care is taken concerning the setting of the built entities. The principle is simple and complies with the fundamental rules of setting in adequacy with its environment. The principal buildings are directed to the North-South in order to offer a natural ventilation, bringing in during the summer a real comfort. This establishment had two objectives. It aimed at protecting against the wind of North and this fact of sheltering the central garden, be-coming a true place of appropriation and conviviality. In the second place, it aimed at releasing and maintaining views on the Tower of Gignac, the Pic Saint Baudille and the low valley of Hérault. Thus in the axis of the central garden is to be found the convent of the church Nôtre-Dame de Grâce.
Entities structuring the site. How to give a matter to the place.

The building is declined in three entities: The Community of communes, the medical and services poles. This dis-tribution of the programmatic entities enabled us to compose the site.

As it was stipulated in the establishment, the first body of building which accommodates the Community of the Communes is thought and positioned as reception building meaning thanks to its volume and its position the en-trance to the site. It releases a huge square on the ground floor to welcome the pedestrians. Here and there volu-mes built with the stone of country are set. The choice of this material helps to mark the entrance, to sit the building using the drawing of the walls of the Castellas and supportings of Causse. These two activities with dissociated function will also differ in their spatiality. In the centre of the square, the reception and the building of the tourist office, slightly overflows in the central garden. Thus positioned like a building of reception, but also of discovery, entirely glazed, it is viewable as we get into the site, and opens views on itself.

This whole supporting the structure accommodating the Community of Communes, allows a modularity of the places and an easy evolution of spaces. This volume taken down from the facade will have skin external designed in a more singular way.
As for the medical pole and the pole of services, they face each other around the central garden. Their compo-sition is relatively symmetrical, united, modular and evolutionary, offering a clear image of the place. In order to bring in a dynamic of spaces the buildings answer directly the program in volume, playing of this fact on taken down facades. The bulkiest spaces are wrapped of a zinc skin offering a unit on the side parts. Their frontages are treated out with light materials, opened as well onto the garden as onto the plantations to the back (and car parks). Their solar protection is ensured by roof overflows transforming itself into shutter to let the light penetrate. The programmatic entities of smaller size come to be intercalated and create the withdrawals in the dynamics of the facade. In order to mark the difference in their assignment, they will be covered with stone of the country. Zinc, stones and concrete of the site will be the essential materials of this construction. They answer to the traditional materials of the place as well as for the dwellings as for the agricultural structure. Building materials employed are durable and renewable. This device offers the advantage of never having “a building back”, the two faces are to be pleasant and attractive.

This project must be taken as a whole and as an element belonging to the landscape. It is commonly agreed that a building established at the entrance of a city and to be more specific a public equipment must be a signal for that city. In our opinion, subtlety is the concept of “signal” which is not to be identified by an element in rupture with its environment. It must of course represent a territory; it must be in fact the shop-window of a landscape and a cul-ture, but without freezing a state so that its representation remains unique. We are dealing with a lively culture and not an “extinct ritual”. This place has a double vocation which should be exploited. It must answer the expectations of the people of passages which wish to get information and better know the area. But it must also answer the expectations of the people who practice it as a working location. This place should not simply be a geographical and economic crossing for the communes which compose this community, nor a simple point of convergence, but a radiant element.