UA step has been taken in the restoration of the Château de Nontron (Dordogne): the elected officials of the Community of Communes of Périgord Nontronnais (CCPN) and the team of the Pôle Experimental des Métiers d'Art (Pema) led by Sophie Rolin, including the castle is the very tired setting, discovered, Tuesday December 17, the completed library.
The work, which began two and a half years ago, was a year late. And we will still have to wait at least eighteen months to see this vast 3.5 million euro project completed. Knowing that the project, broken down into three phases, has been in the pipeline for five years. “This is the 96th site meeting,” breathes Fabrice Van Gerdinge, director of CCPN services, chaired by Gérard Savoye.
The library is the first fully restored room.
Stéphane Klein / SO
Stéphane Klein / SO
The first floor will house the permanent collections, a conference room and a screening room.
Stéphane Klein / SO
Offices and reserves will occupy the attic.
A very fragile building
“We're done breaking things,” smiles Jean-Pierre Rodrigues, the Montignac architect who was chosen. This long stage experienced hazards: to put it simply, the castle slipped on the rock and opened in two. “He was much more fragile than we imagined,” said an elected official.
It was necessary to mobilize specific, “non-invasive and non-destructive” technologies, specifies the architect: injected resin, concrete floors containing tie rods, connecting the facades, micropiles along the exterior walls on the garden side, etc. “But everything that did not fall, we kept it: that is to say the traces of the construction site, the bad weather and the uses of the castle”, adds Jean-Pierre Rodrigues, who took this side from his candidacy to the call for tenders. In the famous library, for example, the walls are immaculate white, but they retain the marks of time that has passed.
On Tuesday, December 17, visitors also discovered another architectural feature: a wooden box which will run from room to room on the ceiling, containing the pipes and cables of the fluids (water, heating, electricity, ventilation, etc.).
Stéphane Klein / SO
The architect Jean-Pierre Rodrigues (left) and on the ceiling, the wooden ribbon which will run from one room to another with the fluid pipes and cables inside.
The 18th century castle, part of whose foundations date from the 8th century, will now be used by the Pema from top to bottom, in the literal sense of the term. That's almost 1,100 m².
