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JEAN-MICHEL WILMOTTE
architect

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Jean-Michel Wilmotte is an architect, town planner and interior designer as well as a museum expert with a passion for detail, and a designer. He is also the founder of Fondation d’entreprise Wilmotte, dedicated to raising the younger generation’s awareness of the links between heritage and contemporary architecture. The concept of `interior design for towns´ was also his brainchild, with the aim of bringing road surfacing, street furniture, street lighting, parks and transport together under one design umbrella.
Restoration and conversion projects are closest to Wilmotte’s heart, from museums and cultural centres (such as the Louvre, where he restored the Salle des Secessions, or the Ullens Foundation - the UCCA – in Beijing) to the tramways in large cities such as Lyons, Valenciennes and Paris. A strong advocate of light as a determining factor for quality of life, where natural sources are lacking, Wilmotte designs low environmental impact lighting systems, such as the one he recently produced for Italian technical and architectural lighting specialists iGuzzini.
A healthy respect for heritage together with an acute perception of proportion are the ingredients that go into his designs for new buildings that fit their surroundings, and these ingredients permeate Wilmotte’s work in his constant pursuit of quality to be shared, designed and built for everyone.

So what does the André Malraux Médiathèque represent for its designer?
(…) Wilmotte commented:  “above all, it’s a meeting place, a crossroads, a cultural and interactive hub open to everyone. It’s where memories are stored; it’s the heart of knowledge and of all the cultural activities that it has to offer (…) What we wanted to do in Béziers was create a building with a unifying role, to suit the wide diversity of its users and their particular needs and desires. (…) This library is a place to come together and, at the same time, a place for private study; the different areas therefore have to meet the requirements of the apparent paradoxes in the plan, but not at the cost of unity of function.”

Compared to the pre-existing urban fabric, the building has an air of authority and is yet at the same time restrained...
“We wanted to enhance people’s perceptions. As day becomes night, the building takes on a different persona. At night, the focus is drawn to the back-lit central structures, using a translucent material made of a thin slab of stone overlaid on glass. During the day, the building is shown to its full advantage by the brilliance of the light stone used on the façade and on the ground. Both day and night, the desired effect was to add something to the square, to enliven it, to send out a signal within the urban fabric.”

What’s new in this particular design from the aesthetic, technical and environmental point of view is the translucent material, which satisfies, most importantly, the demanding environmental specifications laid down by the client...
 “Our main aim was to limit the use of air-conditioning, without sacrificing the light-flooded areas we wanted. It was Louis Kahn who said: ‘A man with a book goes to the light. A library begins that way.’ We did a lot of research before coming up with a material that would let the light through while at the same time screen the sun’s rays.”
A double-skin façade, a Provence (or Canadian) well, the use of terracotta for the external walls (with ‘Monomuro’ bricks) all combine to make this building a sterling example of sustainable architecture for the benefit of all, or - to quote Wilmotte – “a design process that flies the flag for the health and comfort of end users, the quality of life for local residents and the good of the environment, keeping the use of natural resources and energy consistently to an absolute minimum.