Location: Gisors, France

Design Team: richter architectes et associés

Area: 2,650 m²

Year: 2026

Photography: Luc Boegly

Design Features: The Gisors Cultural Hub occupies reclaimed land beside the River Epte in Normandy, on a site long treated as the edge of the town centre and covered by surface parking. Contaminated soil, pre-war industrial remains, a high water table and flood risk had made the river largely invisible in everyday life. Rather than concealing these conditions one by one, richter architectes et associés used the 2,650 m² cultural complex to assemble a three-screen cinema, media library, riverside park and flood-resilient infrastructure into a new urban geography.

The project connects more than two cultural programmes. The town-hall square and its civic buildings, the historic centre and open countryside, the commercial high street and the banks of the Epte are drawn into one continuous pedestrian sequence. Architecture appears less as an isolated landmark than as a journey that gradually reveals existing relationships. The church, post-war buildings, water and surrounding fabric are repeatedly reframed as formerly disconnected pieces acquire new proximity.

A park, media library and cinema form the three principal elements, linked by a long east-west gallery. The design extends Gisors' history of pairing architecture with water, from the covered gallery of a fifteenth-century washhouse to the monumental stair and colonnade of the post-war town hall. Recast along the river, the gallery becomes both circulation and a changing threshold between town and countryside, quiet reading and immersive cinema, building and landscape.

Parking is moved beneath the buildings into infrastructure designed to withstand periodic flooding. This releases the ground as a walkable public park where people can pause and approach the river again. Since opening, residents of the neighbouring retirement home, students after school and everyday walkers have shared the banks and gallery, while vegetation and biodiversity have returned. The project's civic value therefore extends beyond its interiors to a piece of city ground that remains useful without a scheduled event.

Warm, pale concrete with a stone-like texture aligns the complex with the mineral tones of Gisors' church, town hall and post-war fabric. Metalwork and joinery with a soft golden reflection bring a finer register that shifts with the light. Inside, the two programmes deliberately diverge: deep red, matte black and restrained lighting give the cinema an enveloping depth, while diffuse daylight, pale timber, smooth concrete and light textiles keep the media library open and calm. A cinema that can host performances and a library equipped for exhibitions, lectures and a music studio allow the building to change with the life of the town.

Design Team: richter architectes et associés was founded in Strasbourg in 1999 by Franco-German siblings Pascale and Jan Richter, who studied at the Strasbourg School of Architecture and Paris-Belleville. Architect Anne-Laure Better joined the practice in 2007, and the three now lead studios in Strasbourg and Paris. Their work spans cultural, educational, healthcare, civic and urban-regeneration programmes.

The practice's early work for healthcare and other vulnerable users sharpened its attention to boundaries, transitions, orientation, light and contact with nature. Its buildings often create substantial in-between spaces across interior and exterior, intimacy and collective life, mineral surfaces and planting, treating architecture as a setting for relationships rather than a self-contained object. The studio received the 2018 Équerre d'Argent for the Metz-Queuleu psychiatric care centre, and all three partners combine practice with teaching in Paris or Strasbourg.