The Vendée History Museum Project
25 June 2009
The Vendée History Museum project can be found in the natural beauty of the Pays de la Loire, between Nantes and Roche-sur-Yon.
The museum, with a total floor area of 5,400m², contains mostly exhibition rooms, but also offers other spaces for visitors, such as the access hall, the reception, the shop, the restaurant and the terrace. Other private spaces for the archives, delivery and administration were developed so as to remain separate from the daily circulation of the museum.
The two main exhibition rooms of 2,500m² respond to the technical and operating constraints imposed on television studios. They are conjoined in a W shape plan and clad with technical duckboard set aside for temporary stage equipment. One room opens onto the landscape and river, on the south side, and the other is situated along the access ramp.
The museum is accessed from the north-east side and its perimeter is situated by a hillside, near the Boulogne river. The magnitude of the building can be appreciated clearly from the south bank. As you approach, you will be surprised by the arrangement and dimensions of the building.
It was the client's wish to minimise the impact on the landscape as much as possible. A large roof of 8,000m², covering the museum, complements the shapes of the terrain.
Structure and roofing
The regular structures of the main halls consist of open spaces 20m wide and with an uninterrupted height of 6m up to the service ceiling.
The main structure of the roof is composed of seven three-dimensional steel lattices of varying width, spaced at 10.5m intervals. The secondary structure is made up of latticed tubular purlins, spaced at 2m intervals. The wind bracing is provided by means of bracing members in the roof plan. As a result of the geometry, the structure is composed of 30 triangles positioned on different planes. The bolted steel framework weighs a total of 500t.
The roof cladding is composed of steel panels perforated on the underside, a 10cm foam glass-type complex (heat insulation) in a sandwich between two layers of tarmac, and finally a top vegetation layer of 15cm (earth and topsoil). The slopes are greater than 20% and the thickness of the vegetation varies from 30cm to 60cm.
As a result of the volume of this structure and the lawn roofs, the building just looks like a new meadow in the countryside.
