La Fabrique Pola by La Nouvelle Agence
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
Founded in 2000 by a group of young artists, as a centre to promote and develop the arts, La Fabrique Pola moved in 2019, to a permanent location, situated in a warehouse on a former industrial site on the River Garonne in Bordeaux. As a non-profit organisation, created by and for the artists, Pola aims at producing, creating and exhibiting in this new space, as much a cultural centre involving the public, as a space dedicated to to the professional of the visual arts.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Founded in the early 2000's by a group of young artists, Pola moved in 2019 to a permanent location - the Pargade warehouse - , on the right bank of the Garonne in Bordeaux. The warehouse has been renovated by - La Nouvelle Agence Architects-, and has been the recipient of the 'prix d'architecture du projet citoyen' in 2020, which distinguishes a concerted and exemplary approach that serves architectural projects.
A non-profit organisation, created by and for the artists of the community, the team at La Fabrique Pola work producing, creating, training and exhibiting in a space, as much a cultural center involving the public, as a space dedicated to the professional structuring and promotion of the visual arts.
Pola is investing in a long-term relationship with the public, working at the heart of the community to encourage the place of art in the daily life of everyone - 'art not separated from experience.'
The old warehouse transformed into a cultural center is on a new pedestrian route and it's four large concrete porticos with folding glass doors, invitingly open up its spaces to welcome the public. The building has the spirit of an artist's studio. The workshops, exhibition and catering areas, all open to the public, are defined by a concave, double-height space between each area to create a honeycombed interior opening out via high accordion porticos to the gabled facade on the Brazza quay. The warehouse is no longer a box but an open structure enjoying an intimate relationship with its environment. The project is conceived as a hospitable space, a home for creativity and a support for the creative. The materials used express functionality. The equipment is modular. The materials were chosen for their expressive and practical qualities.
La Fabrique Pola can be embraced without complex for a few passing hours by a tentative beginner, or for several years, by an experienced artist, finally anchored at quay.
Key objectives for sustainability
Objective 1: Re-USE: The building was planned to be demolished, La Fabrique Pola engage in a complex political process to get the right to occupy the building and renovate it, instead of creating a new building
Objective 2: Low maintenance and exploitation costs
Objective 3: Making the most with the budget of EUR 2.8 million for 4000m²: The very tight economy of the La Fabrique Pola project (500euros/m²) has involved an adapted architectural writing with La Nouvelle Agence, architects, where this first condition becomes an asset.
Today, it is a crossed architecture, an old sheet metal shed of 4000 m2, on the quays of the Garonne in Bordeaux, almost industrial wasteland, discovered at the end of almost twenty years of existence and after seven moves, a place permeable to ideas, rain, as to walkers, opened by huge doors of sliding workshops. A frugal architectural space, sober, redesigned based on wood, honeycomb concrete, mixed wood-concrete structure assuming a humble posture in front of the elements the collective spaces live with the seasons. In fact, it is perhaps primarily a collective organization, 100 workers who divide themselves into 600 m2 of offices, 800 m2 of workshops, a horizontal organization, politically and spatially, plural in its identities intertwined in a living cooperation and source of wealth. Density - complementarity - diversity that allow the artist to evolve in a swarm of initiatives, cooperation, knowledge and tools of productions that give him the power and agility to regain possession of the means of his existence.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The project is conceived as a hospitable space, a home for creativity and a support for the creative. The materials used express functionality. The equipment is modular.
In the interior visible service networks, grey concrete, white honeycomb concrete, natural spruce. Washed beige fibrocement on the river facade; aluminum supports, white cladding, grey concrete portico on the Brazza facade. The materials were chosen for their expressive and practical qualities.
The metal structure and the roof, preserved from the original structure, not only adds character, but their presence imposes rhythm and order to the new use.
The public facade of the Factory is on the street, and with high, framed glass openings, instead of the sliding doors of the old warehouse, the building has the spirit of an artist's studio. The workshops, exhibition and catering areas, all open to the public, are defined by a concave, double-height space between each area to create a honeycombed interior opening out via high accordion porticos to the gabled facade on the Brazza quay. The warehouse is no longer a box but an open structure enjoying an intimate relationship with its environment.
In the interior, the wide, spacious mezzanines are irregularly punctuated by work and exhibition spaces. They are temporarily allocated as such to invoke the image of an artist or craftsman working, improvising, exhibiting and living in an 'attic.'
An architectural project that is part of a future urban reflection, integrating the navigability of the river, the urban transformations of the district, the evolution of the uses of citizens and their involvement in the transformation of the city. Pola can set an example today, but it is not unique. There must be places, sizes, shapes and organizations different from that of the factory. Architectures designed by citizen architects – concerned, involved inhabitants – must exist in understanding the challenges of urban and social catalysis of the territory.
Key objectives for inclusion
A cultural project open to the public, on the banks of the Garonne.
Created by and for the artist communities of the territory, La Fabrique Pola, is a common good. It is as much a cultural equipment dedicated to the public, as a space dedicated to the professional structuring of the visual arts sector, based on the values of the social and solidarity economy. From its new home port anchored on the right bank of Bordeaux, The Pola Factory invests in a lasting relationship with the territory it inhabits and gives itself to heart, in support of its inhabitants, to promote the entry of art into the daily life of each or "art not separated from experience".
Gardens on the quays along the Left Bank of the Garonne, now being extended along the Right, the Chaban-Delmas bridge with walkways as easily accessible as on the traditional “Pont de pierre”, have opened up new paths along the river. The old warehouse, now transformed into a cultural center – La Fabrique Pola - is on the new pedestrian route and its four large concrete porticos with folding glass doors, invitingly open up its spaces to welcome the public.
By opening up to the public, about the life of the neighborhood and the territory it invests, the project The Pola Factory is also the demonstration that architecture has fully establish its place on old brownfields, and that it does not could be confined to large, prestigious projects, the result of commissions exceptional or reserved for an elite or the experts. As you know, in the face of the technicality of this discipline, many of our fellow citizens may feel illegitimate to express their opinions, their needs. Through this project, La Fabrique Pola and La Nouvelle Agence remind us that everyone is able to design their own framework and that the architecture of everyday life, which is often not enough perceived in our landscapes, exists and must be able to find a way to express themselves in the all territories.
Results in relation to category
The participation of this project, the revitalization of a territory by the increased access for all to the public culture. The citizen project approach, as well as the realization results - a cultural equipment – the aim is to "promote the entry of art in everyone's everyday life" indeed have a leading role in play to reconnect the city and the link social. The Pola Factory project demonstrates the strength of architecture as an active and creative lever service of social cohesion.
Each participates in the structuring of the sectors, the development of the endemic forces of the territories, not based on the exclusive financial profitability but on their impact on the quality of life, solidarity, hospitality and collective intelligence. Accordingly, an affordable, phased architectural project is designed, corresponding to the economy of the project and the reality of the uses and cultures of its inhabitants. It is at this price: to finance the projects, to let the actors do it and to give them the means – which are not prohibitive here 2.8 million euros for the emergence of this place – that the communities affirm their driving role in the emergence of a harmonious, multiple and solidarity-based city. Pola, is a multitude. Far from the idea of the behemoth, it is the diversity of actors and aesthetics that makes the strength of our proposition.
Through this project we defend an archipelago of possibilities and practices, architectural writings, never fixed, always specific to their territory, their urbanism, their economic realities. And this methodology of cooperation applies not only within our walls, but it wants to spread over our territories – from the southern districts of Bordeaux to the Creuse, via the South Gironde or the Rue Curial in Paris – in their cultural and social singularities.
How Citizens benefit
The Pola factory is a project carried out by a community of artists and workers who are also citizens involved in their territory. Also, the place is open to all actors, social, educational, health solidarity who enter the place with their cultures, their desires their projects Architecture is permeable to passers-by and all visitors, the entire cultural offer is free or helped for the most deprived.
A place where artists are at home, as an extension of the public space, able together to think about the transformation of the city and its reappropriation by citizens. Able to think also the transformation specific to their building, Infinite architecture, never definitive that adapts and evolves according to the uses and the artistic and political project.
But it is above all, for many inhabitants of neighboring neighborhoods, a public place in which they engage in dialogue on what makes culture, at the crossroads of the know-how of the workers of the Factory and their projects – social, educational, collective, personal ... A building in the heart of a district in transformation, within an industrial wasteland in transformation to become a public park, on a right bank of the Garonne transformed into a laboratory of the city lived and decided. A place that thinks of conviviality as a crossroads of creation and civic ambition, accessibility - cultural, economic, geographical - as a breeding ground for creation and the place of the artist in the emergence of the shared, erected, lived city.
Pola is a place of welcome open to all, solidarity and hospitable. Pola is an architecture open to all, solidarity and hospitable.
Innovative character
A project created by and for its inhabitants.
Pola is an artistic and cultural factory carried by a cooperative arrangement of 24 organizations, autonomous in the conduct of their projects, and acting, each, in the field of visual arts and at its edge. They're the people of Pola. Together, they constitute a professional hub covering the fields (and the chain of trades related to it) of architecture, contemporary art, publishing, graphic design, digital, audiovisual, printing, illustration, cultural engineering and combine, within their teams and their networks, plural artistic know-how. It is a private initiative, art and architecture students who started 18 years ago, for the public and have received the support of public partners in this capacity and gradually. The cooperation processes, driven and facilitated by the Pola Factory team, are at the heart of all its activities. The architectural project of La Fabrique Pola was designed and carried out in close collaboration with its inhabitants. It was financed by 2/3 by the public partners, the last third being a loan taken out jointly by the inhabitants of La Fabrique. They are thus both the owner and master of the inhabitants of their project.
The singularity of the project is that the transformation of the building and its development was collectively and jointly sponsored by the associations and artists who occupy it. The entire architectural program was designed by the collective during group work and implemented by the architects, themselves users of the space. The financing was supplemented by a loan carried by the association and repaid jointly and severally within the framework of a cooperation agreement between the Fabrique Pola and its members.
