Centre aqualudique de l'O
From prison to swimming pool
The Aqualudic Center “L’O” is located a ten-minute walk from Orléans train station, occupying the former site of the city’s jail, decommissioned in 2014.
Once an urban rupture, cut off from its surroundings by a long perimeter wall, the site now hosts a public facility that establishes a renewed dialogue with its neighborhood.
Designed through an urbanistic and landscape-driven approach, the project articulates three core intentions:
-Opening toward the historic city center to the south while still addressing Boulevard Guy Marie Riobé, a major metropolitan axis to the north;
-Preserving the domestic scale of the adjacent urban fabric by fragmenting the building mass into several articulated volumes;
-Undertaking an unprecedented landscape strategy that allows the architecture to recede within a lush vegetal environment.
Discreet architecture
The design process began with an exploration of the relationship between the Centre-Val de Loire territory, its river, and its ecological landscape.
Thus, the mineral footprint of the former penitentiary has given way to abundant vegetation, through which a contemporary sports facility subtly emerges. Within this vegetal envelope, a restrained architecture-defined by transparency, water, and air-enhances visual comfort for local residents and neighbors.
Wooden frame and metal walkway
The primary entrance is located beneath a distinctive shading canopy on the southern forecourt, while a secondary access on the north side at the first floor level connects to a metal footbridge that spans the entire length of the aquatic center.
The timber-frame building is composed of four distinct volumes housing the four main programs-sports hall, aquatic center, wellness area, and changing facilities-linked by a central north–south circulation spine that integrates reception zones and administrative support spaces.
The building is bordered by landscaped private parking areas, with access ensured through generously planted pedestrian paths that filter views between visitors and local residents.
A park instead of equipment
Clad in high-performance solar-control glazing with a subtle reflective finish, the two pool halls maintain visual continuity with the surrounding park: the rich endemic flora and fauna, the preserved heritage cedars and mature plane trees, the newly planted tall-stem trees, and the semi-intensive green roofs. These features allow users to experience swimming within nature at the heart of the city, enable the architecture to dissolve into the landscape, and have earned the project the BiodiverCity label-a first for an aquatic facility.
The volumes housing the changing rooms and wellness program, more intimate in nature, are more opaque and less open to the exterior. Their solid surfaces and rounded forms effectively disappear thanks to the polished stainless-steel cladding that envelops them entirely. The whole complex plays with vegetal reflections, blending seamlessly into the new landscape.
BIM and prefabricated
The construction process favored prefabrication: 90% of the concrete structure, glued-laminated timber beams, sauna modules, changing units, and pool liners (using the MyrthaPool system-laser-scanned on site, custom-made off-site, faster than traditional tiling, with fewer joints and improved watertightness). This off-site fabrication, ordered before the pandemic, allowed the project to remain largely unaffected by delays.
The project was developed in Level-2 BIM from early design through execution, integrating multiple federated models regularly updated throughout the process. This enabled on-site BIM coordination using tablets throughout construction and ensured exceptional precision in the installation of the underground technical systems. The BIM model was subsequently shared with subcontractors and later with the facility operator for long-term maintenance.
