Cité du Design Saint Étienne, France

As Saint-Étienne was historically an industrial city, factories were cheek by jowl with public spaces on the hillside. Now Paris and Berlin-based LIN Architects is taking that heritage and fusing it with a far-seeing plan that takes both industry and design into the future.

LIN Architects, led by Finn Geipel and Giulia Andi, won a competition in 2004 to mastermind the design and construction of the Cité du Design, a new international exhibition centre built on the site of an old munitions factory in the Loire Valley city of Saint-Étienne.

Construction is scheduled for completion in 2009.

NETWORK OF DESIGN

Saint-Étienne is characterised by narrow streets nestled into the hillsides of the Central Massif of France, and a perpendicular orientation to the river Furan that has restricted further expansion.

Yet the city prides itself on design and innovation, boasting five universities, five institutes of higher education and France's leading modern art collection outside Paris as well as an art and industry museum for its population of 400,000.

It visualises itself as the core that links a wide variety of design, industry, art and business elements that face the future.

The plan by LIN Architects aims to make excellent use of space and previous constructions. "Today this development offers great opportunities for regeneration. After the gradual relocation of industries to the surrounding regions, disused islands were left behind," LIN Architects said in a statement.

THE PLATINE

The slow-growing development of the old Manufacture d'Armes building and grounds has at its centre a slender 7,000m² eco-friendly communications structure, dubbed the Platine.

The Platine boasts a flexible and reactive high-tech skin that can be altered from opaque to transparent, with its triangular solar and photosynthesising panels open or closed, according to the needs of the exhibition centre.

Also, the Platine is expected to save energy by being heated and cooled by water moving under the floor, powered by 120 geothermal piles 10m-30m deep, ten geothermal probes 150m deep, and a well created by sealing what would be the building's crawl space.

LIN's new development brings the area back into view of the city at the same time as it becomes a point from which the city, and the world, can be examined and understood. The place of arms will become a public square, with two gardens either side.

CONNECTING DIVERSITY

The Platine helps connect the town to diverse programmes and exhibitions in the auditoria, restaurants, library, greenhouse and other public facilities for activities, teaching and research of the Cité du Design.

"The Manufacture was a blind spot – a place erased from public awareness. It was reduced to the few elements visible from the city: Grille, Bâtiment de l'Horloge, and the two gardens on both sides of the Place d'Armes," LIN said.

The Platine, next to the Bâtiment de l'Horloge at the development's centre, is not only a 360° viewing platform but will itself be seen from afar, especially when lit up. The Platine will draw travellers and residents towards the Cité du Design, anchoring the city.

The L-shaped metal viewing platform will be accessed via one lift and two opposing sets of stairs within one open stairwell. Hollow and solid profiles will be connected by star-shaped nodes to delicately frame the field of view, LIN said.

The old weapons factory is symmetrical, with elongated halls – the Bâtiment Ateliers – where the arms were made functioning as warehouses following decommissioning.

These non-hierarchical, open structures as repetitive structural elements evoke an industrial look and feel, so are softened somewhat by the observatory tower, reflecting the modern repurposing of the one-time factory, LIN noted.