Palais des Congrès

Project description

The Palais de Congrès de Royan was one of the first to be built in France, inaugurated in 1957.
It was designed by architect Claude Ferret, who was also the town planner and chief architect for the reconstruction of Royan, 80% of which was destroyed in the Second World War in 1945.

The Palais des Congrès de Royan, inaugurated in 1957, was a major feature of the reconstruction period in the 1950s. It was first designated a “Patrimoine XXème” (20th century heritage site) in 1999, and was listed as a historic monument in its entirety on March 29, 2011. This was in recognition of “the architectural quality of architect Claude Ferret’s mature work, a place of experimentation in prefabrication and the first Palais des Congrès built in France”.

It illustrates the notion of the free plan, the functionalist principle of autonomous spaces or the dematerialization of facades, the independence of distribution in relation to and thanks to an innovative constructive system, organic facades where each component of the plan contributes to shaping the face of the building: “the generating plan” as Le Corbusier advocated.

A denatured work :
Like many major works of this period, this innovative architecture, both in its aesthetic and technical codes, has been profoundly transformed over the years, from the exterior to the interior, and has, in fact, lost many of the attractions that made it a symbol of Royan’s reconstruction. This loss of value has had an impact not only on the building itself, but also on the town’s image.

A rediscovered work of art :
In 2018, the Royannaise municipality, with the help of the DRAC, decided to restore the Palais des Congrès to its original 1950s state. After a competition, the architects Atelier Ferret Architectures and Chatillon architectes were chosen for this complex project, 70 years after the architects Claude Ferret and his collaborators Andrien Courtois, Pierre Marmouget and Jacques Bruneau.

The two programs (1950 / 2018) are virtually identical. An analysis of the Palace’s operating problems over the years has shown that, despite a design that allows great freedom of internal organization, the requalified Palace will be able to accommodate a wide variety of activities, all of which will be fully adapted to the building’s design.

Project description :
A simple 60 m x 32 m parallelepiped volume raised on stilts and covered by a flat roof suspended by a set of concrete-coated metal beam-consoles allowing a 21 m overhang. It appears to float, airborne, facing the sea, proud of its resurrection.
All the original layouts that had disappeared were rebuilt, demolishing those that had accumulated over the years. The conservation and restoration work has enabled us to recover the modular spaces, architectural features and remarkable furnishings.
The palace on both the sea side and the city side (square) has regained its transparent facades, original colors, original floors and ceilings, rediscovered or redone with, where necessary, materials made by the manufacturers for the Palace.

All interior spaces have been restored.
The functional spaces are distributed over 2 main levels, first floor and first floor, including :

• The large multi-purpose room, with seating and/or standing capacity for a wide range of activities,
• Committee and meeting rooms,
• Vast open spaces on two levels for various activities (exhibitions, bar area, checkroom, reception hall),
• Technical areas, kitchen, pantry, storage and boiler room in the basement,
• Sanitary facilities

A ground floor level has been preserved, set back from the volume, although it did not initially exist (the only deviation from the original rendering), and houses the CIAP (heritage architecture interpretation center).
On the seaward side, terraces on the ground floor and first floor open onto the sea across the entire width of the building.

The 460-seat auditorium, with its elliptical balcony and stage, allows the 430 parterre seats to be retracted under the stage in less than an hour, and with more comfortable seats than the simple chairs of the original auditorium.
Today’s new technical equipment is, for the most part, retractable.

• Screen, ceiling-mounted projection device
• Motorized curtains of all heights, allowing blackout

The recessed façade, born of the assembly of the “organs” that house each of their functions. No columns break or weigh down this organic, residual façade of polychrome aluminum panels, solid or with portholes or panes of glass. Eleven concrete-coated metal brackets suspend the flat roof, from which a secondary metal frame stiffens the south and north facades. On Foncillon Square, to the north, the architects used the same components, but designed a flat façade. The only break in this flatness is a trapezoidal metal arch penetrating into the heart of the palace, a solution often adopted by Ferret to emphasize the interpenetration of inside and outside.

The two side facades of the hollowed-out box are load-bearing and made of reinforced concrete; but they are widely perforated, to the west by numerous rectangular portholes forming a claustra, and to the east by vertical sunbreakers made of concrete mesh. As the sun travels through the building, natural light floods into the palace, creating new effects of light and shadow created by concrete slats, aluminum panels with portholes, large bay windows and concrete clerestories.

At nightfall, a new edifice emerges from the half-light and artificial light: the frame of the box fades away; the viewer perceives only the magic of the palace’s neon lights, whose harsh light gushes out of the box through its multiple openings; light and the gaze circulate freely within this complex organism reduced to the superimposition of open, thinly partitioned trays that illustrate to the letter the Corbusian principle of the free plan.

Ferret joins Le Corbusier in the attention paid to the treatment of the connections between the various components, with particular attention paid to vertical connections: the result is a dizzying interplay of hoppers, floor recesses, staircases and balconies that extend to the exterior, once again challenging the traditional conception of the façade. The architectural promenade multiplies the points of view on the interior, but also on the exterior, thanks to the transparency of the project. Responding to the versatility of the program, the palace is a superimposition of vast open plateaus.

This display highlights the autonomous volume of the party or congress room that appears as a jewel embedded in a rigid frame.
Architects adopt an oval room whose curve is perceptible in almost all its parts. The dining room, but also the triangular balcony of the restaurant, emerge from the bare facade that loses all flatness.