This transparency also enables users to easily find their way around the vast building. While presenting these preserved ornamentations and treasured heritage spaces of the building, the architects opted for glazed structures at places that would maximise their visibility. Since the historic site had undergone many layers of renovations and reconstructions by diverse and renowned architects, over the years, there were a multitude of architectural and spatial interventions. In this venture, one of the challenges they faced was identifying the different architectural forms and styles that characterise the site. These redistributed circulation nodes were built into the gaps of the site in an organised manner. The new circulation, both vertical and horizontal, was planned to ease the movement of users and provide easy access to the collections. This primarily involved the redistribution of circulation, preservation and reinterpretation of high-value areas, revealing traces of older design details and giving them new uses, along with providing work areas while ensuring good conditions. The first phase of the project, completed in 2016, enabled the architects to probe deeper into the site's reorganisation. The architects' work was structured around a personal and comprehensive vision of the project where each task had to be part of a coherent whole Image: © Marchand Meffre/Atelier Bruno Gaudin Architectes Understanding the building is an infinitely complex undertaking because of the breaks in levels, the dead ends, the dispersal of traffic, the densification by strata or by ‘islands,’ and the often erratic transformations that impede an understanding of this vast tangle of spaces,” share the architects. “The premises immediately appeared to be fascinating witnesses to the eventful architectural history of a building that was built in fits and starts over three centuries. It was the first time that the building-the entire library, except for the five listed spaces-could be analysed and taken in its entirety by a single project manager. In 2007, Atelier Gaudin was appointed as project manager for the requalification of the Richelieu Quadrangle, 'parent institution' of BnF.
This is how Atelier Bruno Gaudin Architectes narrativised their 15-year-long renovation of the former National Library of France, also called the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF). “….closed in on itself, the large, magnificent, worn, fragmented, dark and dilapidated treasure chest has now been given a new identity, full of light.”
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