ENERGY GLOBE
Reunion

WINNER:
Co-Architectes

With the Project:
Wild South Media Library

The Wild South Media Library is a library located in Saint-Joseph; a town situated in the south of Reunion Island (a French over-sea territory in the Indian Ocean). It is an open building with no air conditioning and it has a set of low-tech solutions such as insulation, ventilation and a low-pressure chimney to encourage air draft. In other words, the building’s design reconciles environmental issues and local lifestyles. In addition, the building includes vegetation, both indoors and outdoors, creating a refreshing oasis for the visitors.

INITIAL SITUATION

Like many other small towns, St-Joseph is facing social, urban and architectural problems, especially with designing a building that saves energy and incorporates the natural environment in the design. The town struggles with connecting the building to an urban grid, resulting in most buildings not having access to an adequate power supply. The new library aims at defining the limits of the city centre and acts as a true urban statement.

SOLUTION

The project aims to translate the Reunion Island’s way of living by connecting with the outside. The architect's first and foremost goal was to promote air-conditioning free architecture using the cross ventilation and low inertia of the facades. From there, the scope of the building grew, from an open public facility to a true example of public passive building. The success of the project helps to promote awareness toward low-tech and yet very comfortable architecture.

INNOVATION

The architects came up with a strategy including absorbent materials and acoustic baffles in the ventilation chimney. The non-orthogonal, non-parallel design of the building also helped as it makes soundwaves respond to each other and avoids the generation of echoes. In the end, the convoluted shape of the building was beneficial in terms of acoustics. One of the low-tech features of the building is the low-pressure extraction chimney. If the wind is insufficient for cross-ventilation, a large extraction chimney serves to increase the exhaust airflow, thereby increasing the movement of the air.