Commissioned by Le Point du Jour for the book Lectures croisées: La bibliothèque Alexis-de-Tocqueville à Caen, OMA, Rem Koolhaas — 2016

This project was carried out in collaboration with the Le Point du Jour art center, based in Cherbourg, for a book dedicated to the new Alexis de Tocqueville Library in Caen. Inaugurated on January 14, 2017, the building was designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), founded by architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas. The library takes the form of a cross, with a ground floor hosting a vast glass-walled reading room, notably built without any interior load-bearing structures.

The photographs for the book were taken by Georges Dupin, Antoine Cardi, Marina Gadonneix, and Gilles Raynaldy — photographers whose work engages with architecture through a distinct authorial perspective. Moving beyond the conventions of architectural photography, these viewpoints offer sensitive and open approaches to the building. In this context, photography becomes a tool that brings together information and imagination to explore a space.

Through 32 photographs distributed throughout the book, Gilles Raynaldy reveals various exterior perspectives of the building, describes its interior spaces — fully open to the city — and observes the diverse behaviors of its readers.

This gallery presents a selection from the series.

http://lepointdujour.eu/pages/editions/#294