CIRM Extension / AWA Architectes

Text description provided by the architects. The project had to meet several constraints: to renovate and partially elevate the existing accommodation of the “l’annexe” in order to increase the capacity of the hotel, to create a building to link this ” l’annexe ” to the Bastide, to design a training center with a conference room, a work room, and three offices and to carry out these works in the occupied site and more precisely by continuing the use of the sleeping premises. The construction site had to be governed and organized around this problem. 

The main idea of the project was to create a link between two entities of the CIRM: the accommodation building and the Bastide. This link takes the form of a building bridge hosting the site’s training areas: conference room, workroom, and offices. The use of spaces around the Mediterranean basin is traditionally based on a close relationship between the interior and exterior. 

Therefore, we thought of this bridge-building as a large exterior corridor serving both covered terraces and interior spaces: the workroom, the offices, and the conference room, which is one of the key spaces of this project because it is really the place where the results of the researchers’ work are presented. 

The interior/exterior boundaries can be modulated at the level of the covered terrace between the conference room and the offices by means of sliding polycarbonate panels, thus regulating the degree of confidentiality chosen. 

The creation of this architectural link makes it possible to evolve the use of the place by introducing an urban and vernacular coherence. The symbolic image of this evolution is the creation of a “village square” at the junction between the bridge building, the existing library, and the CIRM restaurant (the project also carried out by AWA-P3G).

The elevation of the housing “annex” is designed in concrete. The project has a concrete core on the ground floor to support the bridge building. On the other hand, the bridge building uses three systems. For the west facade and the workroom located in the vertical continuity of the concrete core of the ground floor, we have favored the use of a concrete veil to stabilize the whole. For the conference room, a wood frame was chosen to lighten the compression loads on the deck.

The walkway was designed in metal. The choice was made to use a WARREN beam structure that is entirely visible, thus contributing to the reading of the work. The facades are made of perforated corten plates, taking on the role of ventilation and visual permeability of the moucharaby traditionally present around the Mediterranean.