The Future Meets the Past – Chartres’ New Town Hall
The city of Chartres, located west of Paris, is not only known for one of the first and most important Gothic cathedrals. With a spectacular new building for the town hall, Chartres is now showing that the future is also at home here. Our Executive Director Lucio Blandini presents this beautiful project, for which we were responsible for the structural and facade engineering, in more detail in a short film.
The new town hall of Chartres directly adjoins a historic building from the 18th century. The design by the French architectural firm Wilmotte envisaged a filigree steel skeleton into which precast wooden box girders were inserted. This design ensures a lightweight construction and a high degree of flexibility with regard to the design of the interior spaces.
The embedding of the new building in the historic townscape is ensured by an elegant double facade. The inner layer of this facade consists of natural stone panels from the region; the outer layer is a glass facade that reflects the hotel’s surroundings and is also crucial for the energy performance of the new building. Incidentally, the high standards set by the client and planners for the sustainability of the design were also confirmed by an HQE certification (Haute Qualité Environmentale).
