The building appeared in the center of the city of Gourne-en-Bre, on the site of the Damau garment factory: about the workshops (ateliers) that made it up and recalls the name of the cultural center. It houses a media library, music, ballet and art schools, as well as a "house of cultural organizations" - associations created by the residents themselves, including the bridge players' club.
The architects had to preserve the garden growing on the territory of the demolished factory and the stone walls that enclose it, as well as coordinate the new building with the historical buildings, and one quite traditional house has been preserved very close to L'Atelier.
The natural solution was the "archetypal" volume with a gable roof, the modern origin of which is emphasized by the continuous cladding of the roof and walls with lilac Canadian slate. Also among the materials used are a copper mesh, partially covering the glazing surfaces, protecting them from the sun and views from the outside (this is how, in particular, the assembly hall located at the end is decorated), as well as larch wood: the protruding rectangular volumes of several rooms of the media library are sheathed with boards: reading rooms, a children's help center, and a story room.
The building resembles the letter H in plan: one of the vertical "sticks" is occupied by a media library, the second - by educational institutions. The “crossbeam” is occupied by the glazed hall of the “house of cultural organizations”: it is possible to hold exhibitions and meetings there.
The building is surrounded by the aforementioned garden, where cherries now coexist with birches. The landscape design of open spaces imitates the South American pampas, and between the buildings of L'Atelier, a real meadow is created, as if randomly planted with flowers, herbs, medicinal plants and designed for rare mowing.
The L'Atelier site faces the street only with a very narrow part of it, and the architects, realizing its importance, turned this place into a "sign" of the city's cultural life. There they erected a "signal building" - a gable volume made of copper mesh, continuing the line of neighboring residential buildings. From a utilitarian point of view, this is just a transformer box, but the main role here is played by the 4-meter inscription “L'Atelier” fixed on the facade, made of red transparent thermoplastic, glowing softly at dusk.
The construction budget with a total area of 2545 m2 (land area - 7700 m2) amounted to 5.79 million euros.
