Bibliothèque UHA La Fonderie, Mulhouse

In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, many manufacturing centres across Europe underwent a rapid transformation following the model of the city of Manchester, often cited as the world’s first industrial city. This was notably the case in Mulhouse, which benefited from free trade with its neighbours thanks to its recent adhesion to the French Republic and easy access to coal thanks to its position along the Rhône-Rhine canal. This made it an excellent spot for developing heavy industry and the “French Manchester” was born.

In 1826, Mulhouse entrepreneur André Koechlin licensed the manufacture of mechanical looms from their British inventor Richard Roberts, who supervised early operations and brought his own workers with him. Koechlin eventually purchased the rights to the Roberts loom outright and expanded the operation to other textile equipment, steam engines and turbines. In 1872, the operation merged with a locomotive manufacturer to become the Société Alsacienne de Construction Mécanique (SACM).

In 1920, architect Paul Marozeau of the Paris Beaux-Arts school (and among the contestants of the Paris 1928 Olympics) was tasked with developing a new building for the plant’s expanding foundry operations. Completed in 1924, the foundry was organized around a large double nave hall for the furnaces, along which ran cranes for the transport of forms and casts. Two lower structures abutted on the main hall: a casting hall (sablerie) to the east and a series of coke and sand hoppers to the west.

Marozeau’s design married the red brick characteristic of 19th century industrial architecture with modern forms in reinforced concrete, such as the elegant basket-handle arches that support the main roof. The foundry hall was lit by large windows on the south end, and by a series of ten triangular lanterns on the roof.

Having largely survived WWII, the Marozeau foundry continued operations until 1960, after which it served as a machine shop until the SACM ceased all operations on the site in 1997.

Part of a large project to revitalize the area and mark Mulhouse’s industrial heritage, the SACM site was converted into housing and a cultural and educational campus, occupying a mix of rehabilitated structures and new construction. For the transformation of the foundry building into a new campus for the Université de Haute-Alsace, the task was delegated to Mongiello & Plisson with Emergence Architecture.

The transformation work started in 2001 with the delicate removal of contaminated materials left behind by decades of heavy industry. Following “surgical demolition” operations, construction of the new campus lasted between 2003 and 2007 and the result was widely praised as both functional and respectful of the original architecture.

One of the two main halls remained mostly open and serves for circulation and as lightwell for the classrooms stacked on the second hall. Under the roof is the university library, where Marozeau’s concrete arches can be admired closely. The complex also includes offices, a cafeteria, a theatre, the municipal archives as well as a community centre.

The images shown here date from my visit in October 2023. I’m very grateful to the communications team at the UHA library for their welcome into this unique building! Merci beaucoup.

This post is part of a series on adaptive reuse in libraries. See the list of such projects I am maintaining or view other posts in this series.

Excerpts from this post appeared in the September 2024 edition of Information Professional.

References