Page 18 - Designing Ways 261

COMMERCIAL
ARCHITECTURE

Espace Mayenne

Laval, France

space Mayenne is a multifunctional this site in accordance with the framework
facility including a large sports of the Ferrié new neighborhood. This
Eand entertainment venue with is an area undergoing change, crucial to
a capacity of 4,500, a gymnasium the dynamic revitalisation of the city.
with a climbing wall for international The building’s organisation respects the
competitions, and a conference hall. In landscape structure and the memory of
addition to these three main venues can the site, combining ecology, compactness,
be found other spaces, such as partner economy of means, and the creation of
lounges designed as modular rooms to a mass plan saving parcels for future
receive guests during games or shows, as programmes. The landscape heritage
well as offices and cloakrooms for artists of the site is remarkable. It is composed
and sportsmen. Outside the building, of a natural area - marshes, woodlands,
the project is completed by a 670-space and wetland - and an old bocage grid
parking lot, a landscaped area, and a with sculptural trees and sunken lanes,
250-metre-long cycling ring for national which are all entirely preserved. An east-
competitions integrating a training track west pedestrian-bicycle path is created
in its centre. to structure the site, crossing the public
parking lot and the wetland, before
The site widening itself in front of the building
Espace Mayenne is located in a former into an entrance piazza.
military site bordering the French city
of Laval, along the D900 urban ring The building
road. The project began with an urban To participate in the economy of soils
and landscape study aiming to define and shape optimisation, the building is
guidelines for the future development of a unitary volume that envelops the three
The lobby

20 Issue 261 • dw