Merle van Marissing
Heritage & Architecture
L’Usine Electrique, a factory for knowledge
Along the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris lies ‘l’Usine Électrique’. A former factory that was organized as a rational machine to efficiently produce electricity in the beginning of the 20th century. The design proposes to transform the building into a library.
But what is the library of the future? As our society is changing and digitizing, the medium to access knowledge will alter more and more from paper books to electronic devices. But the library will not extinct. It has a future as a public space where people meet, produce and exchange knowledge. In the design this meetingplace is organized around the history and symbolism of the factory. Its former processes are reinterpreted and the interventions and additions in the design are inspired on the original value of the monument, thus creating a factory for knowledge.