The French town of Dole, located on the river Doubs half way between Dijon and Besançon in the Jura county, has an attractive old centre of historic importance. Grouped around the 16th-century collegiate church with its 75 metre tower is an extensive ensemble of listed buildings.
Any modern-style building would impact negatively on the silhouette of this medieval town, so, when choosing a location for a new multi-purpose hall for the local community, il was decided to build it on an area of waste land on the opposite bank of the river.
The new hall, 59 x 56.5 meters in polan, now stands confidently yet respectfully facing the old town across the waters of the Doubs. Blocks of rough-hewn local stone are anchored into the windowless concrete walls on three sides of the 12 meter high hall. The fourth side is clad in stainless steel panels with a high-gloss finish that acts like a mirror, reflecting the ever-changing light moods and cloud patterns of the surroundings and the sky above.
Flexibility was a priority in designing the interior. The 44 x 39 meter column-free hall, spanned by steel trusses, can be used for a wide variety of purposes – from music concerts and theatre performances to exhibitions, congresses and sports events. It can be configured to accomodate anything from 200 to 1900 people (by opening up the hall to the foyer), thanks to a modular space concept featuring movable acoustic partitions and sliding blocks of seating.
A 44 meter long steel girder spans almost the entire width of the building on the month façade. This enables the foyer to be opened up to the terrace, via glass doors in a continuous strip of glazing below the girder. The girder itself is clad on the outside with vertical sandwich panels, 9 meters high and 900 mm wide. Each panel is covered by a sheet of 1.5 mm thick stainless steel (grade: EN 1.4301) with a high-gloss mill finish.
Fitted into the solid, 25 cm thick concrete of the other three façades are large blocks of Rocheret stone, a type do limestone quarried in the region. This stone, with its yello-to-grey colouration, was also used in the past to build the medieval town centre; its use in this modern building represents a further visual link with the immediate environment. Positioned 90 cm in front of these sculptural walls is an irregular grid of stainless steel tube. This grid, which is attached to the wall at intervals via fixing plates, also acts as a frame for climbing plants.
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