Halles de Rodez
In Rodez, the design of the new market hall stemmed from the municipality’s ambition to introduce a renewed food offering in the heart of the city, on the town hall square. Responding to a strong request — to draw inspiration from the Baltard market halls — the agency developed a proposal that reinterprets this architectural heritage without resorting to pastiche, while asserting a contemporary and distinctive design language.
Reinterpreting the Baltard Market Halls
The brief clearly expressed a desire to revive the spirit of the Baltard Market Halls, a symbol of generous and rhythmically structured metal architecture.
This desire raised several questions: how can one invoke a historical language without limiting it to mere reproduction? How can its principles be preserved while anchoring the building in its own time?
The agency chose the path of reinterpretation, developing a precise steel modénature composed of meticulous details and a structure that is both expressive and restrained.
This lineage is embraced but never literal: it serves as a starting point for two major design intentions — light and scale — which allow the project to fully assert its modernity.
Light: a structuring architectural principle
In historic market halls, light was primarily zenithal. In Rodez, the agency preserved this principle while adding a bold gesture: freeing the entire perimeter of the building to install continuous glazing that creates an extremely open hall, visible from the street and offering visual transparency for pedestrians.
This choice provides great comfort for vendors, while also turning the building into a kind of urban lantern at dusk.
Inside, wooden panels soften the light and bring a warm materiality, contrasting with the cooler, more precise character of the steel.
Working with scale: seeking the right proportion with finesse
In the heart of Rodez’s remarkable heritage district, inserting a facility of this magnitude required an approach capable of integrating the project with a certain delicacy. By working on the building’s scale — and more specifically on the continuity between interior and exterior — we addressed this challenge.
The response takes the form of a peripheral gallery, a true buffer space whose height is noticeably lower than that of the main hall.
This device helps soften the perceived scale of the building and restore a welcoming, human dimension. Combined with the continuous glazing, this gallery enhances the fluidity between inside and outside and lends the whole structure a sense of visual lightness.
A pleasure of use grounded in meticulous detailing
The Market Hall forms a coherent whole: it is both a meeting place that must be pleasant and welcoming, and a working tool for vendors, enabling them to showcase their craft while remaining technically efficient. Every detail was therefore designed with great precision.
A key principle responds to these various aims: limiting the height of the central stalls to 130 cm to ensure transparency and clarity throughout the space. The eye can then grasp the entirety of the stalls, placing them visually in dialogue with one another.
The careful selection of materials also reflects the space’s quality: the harmonized color of the tiling enhances the stainless-steel or solid oak countertops, the lighting design ensures real comfort, and the use of micro-perforated wooden panels guarantees proper acoustics.
Continuous dialogue with each vendor allowed aesthetic intentions to be aligned with their professional constraints. Each stall is part of a unified whole while expressing its own identity.
Now fully in operation, the Market Hall thrives to the rhythm of its vendors and its inhabitants, demonstrating the success of the dialogue established between history, use, and modernity.
