The project is located in the rural landscapes of southern France, in a city called Monein. The building takes place on the main square near the town hall. The idea is to create an architectural happening that can really play the role of a flagship in the city. Our strategy when designing this building was to use and preserve the urban and architectural context to create a contemporary architecture, which dialogues with its historical environment. Because it is a public building, its architecture must correspond to its function. Using the esthetic codes of the actual town houses around the main square, its contemporary architecture makes the media library become an urban landmark of the town square.

While the building is aligned to the adjacent houses, a gap is created on the ground floor to create a porch and an access to the forecourt. To create the dialogue between historic and contemporary, we decided to preserve the existing barn, which becomes the background of the forecourt. Inside, from the lobby we can see the reading room that is fully open on the garden. In the southern part of the parcel, this garden offers the right amount of light and a calm atmosphere for the reading room on the ground floor.