The town of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges wanted to turn a disused administrative site, dating back to the period when the town was rebuilt, into a cultural centre with a media library, a tourist information centre and a 4,800m2 floor area. The old complex was made up of a central courtyard and several buildings next to one another. These buildings once housed the town’s police station, high court and chamber of commerce. We thought that it would be a good idea to bring these different sections together to offer a complex centred upon a vast communal space.
We chose to do this because ‘La Boussole’, a new centre for culture and tourism, is not only a hub for learning and leisure: it can also lay claim to the status of a ‘third place’. Indeed, its new structure and events schedule encourage encounters, both between individuals and groups. We decided that the new exhibition room would close the elevation on the street Rue Jean-Jacques Baligan and that a glass roof, tinted with red and yellow, would crown the former courtyard. Like an openwork tealight holder, this concrete structure casts natural light in geometric shapes of flat tints.
Bio Located in the heart of Strasbourg, Dominique Coulon & Associés is a firm of architects of national and international renown.
For more than 25 years, the agency has earned a reputation for the quality of the public facilities it designs. It has worked on a wide and varied range of programmes, including a media library, music school, auditorium, school complex, swimming pool, sports facilities, a residential home for the dependent elderly, and housing.
In 2022 he was awarded the Golden Medal by the French Academy of Architecture.
Other prizes The agency has received many awards and distinctions: firstly in 1996 with the Prix de la Première Oeuvre for the ‘Pasteur’ lower secondary school in Strasbourg, followed by a number of nominations for the Équerre d’Argent award in 1999, 2002 and 2003. In 2006 it was a prize-winner in the PEB1 Compendium of Exemplary Educational Establishments organised by the OECD, for the ‘Martin Peller’ school complex in Reims. In 2008 it was nominated for the BSI Swiss Architectural Award and for the European Union prize awarded by the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, for the National Drama Centre in Montreuil. It has received a Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award on three occasions. In 2014, it won the Pool Vision Contest prize in the ‘public pools’ category, for the swimming pool in Bagneux. In 2017 it received the first prize in the Eiffel Trophies rewarding steel architecture, for the Media Library (Third Place) in Thionville, and was nominated for the European Union prize awarded by the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, for the residential home for the dependent elderly and the residential centre for handicapped people in Orbec. In 2022, the French Academy of Architecture awards its Grand Gold Medal to Dominique Coulon.
