Pierres Vives furnishing
Pierres Vives is situated in Montpellier, France’s eighth-largest and most dynamic city. It has been conceived as an innovative cultural offer, to meet the needs of the area’s significant economic growth and increasing population of over 1,000 inhabitants per month.
The commissioner and the architect have planned to concentrate three civic institutions in a single location: the public archives, a multimedia library and Hérault Sport.
Given the contained programs, the spectacular design is inspired by the idea of a ‘tree of knowledge’ as an organizational diagram. The archive is located at the solid base of the trunk, followed by the slightly more porous library, with the sports department and its offices on top where the trunk bifurcates and becomes much lighter. These various parts of this “cite administrative” share several functions at the heart of the building, with auditorium and meeting rooms combining in a huge cantilever canopy above the main entrance. The branches projecting off the main trunk on ground floor, articulate the entrances into the various institutions. All the public entrances are located on the western side of the building; whilst the service entrances for staff and loading bays are on the eastern side. In this way the tree-trunk analogy is exploited to organise and articulate the complexity of the overall “cite administrative”.
Zaha Hadid consistently pushes the boundaries of architecture and urban design. Her work experiments with new spatial concepts ranging widely from urban master planning to products, interiors, and furniture.
She is best known for her seminal built works – the Vitra Fire Station in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany (1993); the Hoenheim Nord Terminus in Strasbourg, France (2001); the Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck, Austria (2002); the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, USA (2003); the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany; the Hotel Puerta America interiors in Madrid, Spain; the Ordrupgaard Museum extension in Copenhagen and the Phaeno Science Centre in Germany (all 2005).
In 2004 Zaha Hadid won the prestigious Pritzker Prize for Architecture.
Dynamobel, through its team in France, has won a project of about 300 jobs in this landmark building. The intervention has been in the office area and furnishing has been done with standard product Tec, Neta, T-Box, Plenum and Nexus.