Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, announces that the architect Pierre-Louis Faloci won the architectural competition initiated in August 2008, for the development of the former Conflans seminary in Charenton-le-Pont, which will house the Centre de la photographie et de la documentation patrimoniale from 2011.
The jury, which met on 9 December under the chairmanship of Michel Clément, Director of Architecture and Heritage, had selected from 143 applications three architectural agencies: Antoine Stinco, OPUS 5 and Pierre-Louis Faloci.
The selected project preserves the classical architecture of the building while making it dialogue with a contemporary writing, notably by the presence of a glass exterior facade. It completely recomposes the internal spaces of the building in order to propose new areas dedicated to conservation, storage, administration, as well as reception and consultation.
The Architecture and Heritage Library, hitherto installed in the Parisian hotels of Vigny and Croisilles, moved at the end of 2008 to the Charenton site, in a temporary configuration on 2700 m².
With this support, the Ministry of Culture and Communication is launching the second phase of the ambitious project that will bring together in 2011, in the same place and in the same institution, the media library of architecture and heritage whose funds are now preserved, for the most part, at Fort Saint-Cyr, ICOM (International Council of Museums), ICOMOS, which appraises the files of monuments and sites eligible for inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, the Société française d'archéologie and the Jacques-Henri Lartigue donation, already based in Charenton.
The Centre de la photographie et de la documentation patrimoniale aims to become a reference centre for archives and heritage and photographic collections. It will complete the site of Saint-Cyr which will continue to preserve the oldest and most fragile state photographic archives.