Arc Iris centre de tri

“Any architect can make a beautiful industrial object. But the important thing is that the envelope provides an emotion. ” A masterpiece open-air shimmering in all its facets, Caiman imposes itself as a monumental sculpture. Its scales reflect the light, the sky and the earth according to the hours and the seasons. Dressed in natural colors, the building becomes alive, blends into the environment, participates in the landscape in its diurnal and nocturnal evolution. This metal envelope reflects a single architectural quest: that of contemplation. Household waste incineration plants may have been renamed the less worrying name of “energy recovery center”, they arouse oppositions of residents increasingly frequent. To better accept them, their architectural quality appears as an asset. Because there is a risk of real blockage linked to the syndrome NIMBY (“not in my back yard”), come from overseas and now well established in France. Or how waste treatment should always be done elsewhere, far from home … This is a phenomenon that had to be confronted to achieve in Calce, near Perpignan, an energy recovery center of 22 tons / hour. Winners of a design competition with Cydel (TIRU Group), the architects Luc Arsène-Henry Jr and Alain Triaud proposed to bring to the front of the undulating facades of their building project a coat of metal bands with more fluid lines. . “The plant must be beautiful because it is proof that the company looks after you. It is no longer necessary that it expresses the industrial vocation because technicality is now a due: a sports car does not show its engine, but its curves. ” Leaning against the rock, the new center stretches over 1500 m long, between evocation of vestiges and great artistic gesture. The champagne anodized stainless steel that was finally chosen helps to melt the building in the ocher land of the scrubland, thus contributing to a better acceptance of its location. In order to recall the local geology, the site has also been developed with the implementation of architectural embankments and a base of raw concrete. Plantations did the rest. With 10,000 m² of cladding laid, the implementation of colored stainless steel represents a first by the scale. The coloring of the sheet, of a thickness of 0.5 mm, was carried out by bath, in an electrolytic process. The subcontractor who shaped the tiles has developed with the architect the necessary one hundred modules with an average size of 950 x 600 mm. This execution was made in the factory so as to avoid the risk of deformation. On the site, a modular galvanized steel support made it possible to fix this kit of precision before mounting the assembly on the secondary framework of the facade. The scales are laid over without visible screws, in a direction that leaves no wind. To point out already the south-east / north-west orientation of the building, chosen according to the winds to minimize its sound impact. The cost of this dressing is compensated by the reduction of the center footprint area, obtained by a studied spatialization of the process. The arrangement of the latter in the slope prevents the plant that hides it from exceeding the ridge line. Even the emergence of the chimney has been reduced to 3 m above the frame, so as not to remind residents of the idea of ​​pollution to which this industrial element refers.