The construction of a public facility is an important event in the life of a city, whatever the scope of the program. In Chelles, the project acquired even more symbolic weight because the gym was supposed to improve the urban legibility of the downtown area. Wedged in between the town hall, the middle school, and a contemporary arts centre fashioned from two old churches by Marc Barani and Martin Szekely, the parcel allocated for the gym’s construction is located in an extremely heterogeneous context of Church, State, culture, education, and athletics. Everything is there, but it all seemed merely juxtaposed rather than truly ordered around an identifiable square. Consequently, the new facility had to enmesh itself in this density to remodel it and elevate the public space to its due level, that of an agora. This is the reason for the project’s formal composition and the insertion of its volume, just as the choice of materials guided the design and fashioned its identity so that the gym would find its place within this neighbourhood of considerable character.

The construction is situated parallel to both the town hall and the middle school. The “L” shape of its two wings creates a new path connecting the public park to the southern part of the square across from the site, where the contemporary arts center is situated. The new building’s regular and straightforward imprint defines the public spaces precisely, which are decorated in a checkerboard pattern of bush-hammered concrete slab and copper-like concrete plates. The piazza and the new pedestrian walkway have become a prominent feature of the downtown’s layout, as have the usages and pedestrian traffic that cut through them, which are now fluid. Once the volumes were arranged, the challenge then became architectural, because installing an athletics facility right in the heart of a downtown demanded an innovative form. All too often gyms resemble opaque boxes that are deaf and blind to their surrounding context. In Chelles, by opening up the architecture, this project was able to participate in the reconstruction of a city’s coherence.

The building has a mixed structure of steel for the main hall and concrete for the small volume that holds the annex and the offices. The two-layered façade is more original. The first layer made of glass allows natural light to enter the main multisport hall. The second, in copper, exists in relation to the surrounding context. It colors and magnifies the reflection of the neighbouring buildings in the new façade. The result is sophisticated, but the technique is simple. An insulated concrete wall within holds up wooden panels between the posts of the curtain wall. The copper plates are affixed to their backside. This double skin creates an optimal acoustic insulation and reduces echoes in the gym. Seen from the outside, the copper (which will change over time from pink to brown) gives the new building a precious sense of allure. It is a kaleidoscope that fragments, refracts, and reflects the image of the surrounding buildings, thereby creating a new, more sensitive and poetic image of the city. The building’s insertion into the city marks its presence, but its skin creates a sense of ambiguity by eliminating its sense of materiality, to the point of making it disappear in a gesture of respect to the surrounding institutions. Nighttime reverses this process, when the lights in the sports hall illuminate the agora.

Client: City of Chelles / Cost: € 5.3M excl. VAT / Surface: 2200 m² + 5 857 m² (exterior developement) / Schedule: 2008 – 2012 / Team: Isabelle Hurpy (HEQ), BETEM (All trades Engineering)