The Espace Mayenne proper contains three spectator halls. The smallest is a 500-seat auditorium/screening room tucked into the side of the hollow. The second, accommodating between 700 and 2,217 people, depending on configuration, hosts handball, basketball, and volleyball matches, and also contains a 54-foot-high international-standard climbing wall. The largest, the Salle Mayenne, is a gigantic multifunction arena that can hold 4,300 people for shows (programming ranges from Swan Lake with a full orchestra to standup comedians), 3,680 for indoor soccer matches, and 4,475 for boxing. The three halls share a forecourt and entrance, with distances from the entrance to each reduced to a minimum, and dressing/changing rooms slipped into interstices. The lower (ground) floor also includes three reception rooms, which can be joined together as one, for corporate sponsors, who enjoy privileged access to the Salle Mayenne.

An international-standard climbing wall is one of the center’s highlights. Photo © Cyrille Weiner

To have uninterrupted sightlines, there are no columns: all three halls were realized using massive concrete perimeter walls (as well as concrete bleachers for the Salle Mayenne) that are spanned by steel beams, which stretch 200 feet in the case of the main arena.

A spaceship-like form (1) conceals a variety of performance areas, including a multifunction arena (2). Photos © Cyrille Weiner, click to enlarge.

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Outside, to tie together the halls’ rather disparate forms, three bands of white-lacquered sheet aluminum wrap around the building in a skirt, the upper and lower bands being diagonally striated while the middle one is perforated (at the rear, the perforations allow airflow to the HVAC equipment on the roof). “We wanted our building to be stealthy,” says Arnod of the distinctly spacecraft-like result, whose whiteness was intended to blend in with the nubilous Mayennais skies. Hidden behind the oak trees as you arrive from the parking lot, this strange object—a little ungainly from certain angles—is the pure product of interior concerns, the enormous skirt lifting here and there to reveal rows of windows and forming a deep entrance soffit on the public forecourt, while the lower ground floor is faced unassumingly in pale board-marked concrete.

Douglas fir slats trace out the complex geometry of the foyer ceiling. Photo © Cyrille Weiner

A certain discretion continues inside the building, in keeping with a region averse to ostentation, with its neat stuccoed houses that often verge on the dreary. The Espace Mayenne’s interior material palette is reduced essentially to wood, concrete, and felt, all in shades of gray and beige, such as the Douglas fir slats that elegantly trace out the complex geometry of the foyer ceiling. “Acoustic performance was a big issue—the essential battle,” says Arnod. “A hall with poor acoustics gets a bad reputation, and performers won’t come.” The thick concrete walls insulate the three halls from each other, while a whole panoply of tricks was deployed in the Salle Mayenne: deflecting concrete alternating with absorbent felt, felt squares hung from the 13-foot-high technical ceiling, felt-lined grills in the risers under the bleacher seating (so the hall absorbs as much sound when empty as when full), and cavities placed at strategic points to moderate the bass (just as the Romans used amphorae beneath the seating of their amphitheaters). Impeccably realized by local contractors who clearly took pride in their contributions, this is a lean, sober spectacle machine that leaves it to the players, performers, and audience to supply the warmth and ambience.

Click drawing to enlarge

Click drawing to enlarge