the venues

La Platine is the building through which you enter the Cité du design when you get off the tram: a building signed by architects Finn Geipel and Giulia Andi from the LIN agencies, made up triangles of glass and steel, glinting green and grey.

The Cité du design’s new look started to take shape in 2009 with the construction of this 200 m long contemporary building. Forget industrial architecture with its heavy metal structures - here the bearing walls have gone, to leave a gigantic open space. Saint-Étienne’s cathedral of design houses exhibition spaces, a library, the Cité du design shop, an auditorium, a materials library and a glass house. La Platine not only serves design, but is itself a life-size experiment as regards its internal operation. There is an earth-to-air heat exchanger in the ground under the building, while the roof consists of 14,000 photovoltaic triangles: clever thinking to produce self-produce so much energy! And you might not realise it, but there is still a link to the old ordnance factory, the Manufacture royale d’armes: a "platine" is the French name for the lock on a firearm, which is the firing mechanism used to ignite the propellant.

La Platine is hosting the exhibitions :
• Le droit de rêver
• En relief, créer en Arménie
• Qui êtes-vous Raymond Guidot
• Faire encore, AD·Rec 2025

Surrounded by 1960 blocks of flats, the Halles Barrouin may seem a surprising choice. And yet, these abandoned industrial sites and working class areas of the city, where machine parts for Saint-Étienne’s mines were once manufactured, hold an important place in the city’s history. As soon as the visitor steps through the door, they will see the magic of the place, the artistic rebirth produced, among other things, thanks to the scenography of designer Joachim Jirou-Najou.

Les Halles Barrouin host the following exhibitions :
• Ressource(s), présager demain
• FABécole
• Design des territoires : le lieu est la ressource

The Halles Barrouin is also home to La Boutique de la Biennale, designed by studio Numéro 111.

The Biennale’s Shop is located at the heart of the exhibitions. It features a selection of objects, books and designer creations linked to the exhibitions. Designed to make sensible use of materials, this ephemeral boutique will nonetheless be sustainable: the structure will become part of La Platine at the end of the Biennale.

Like a micro-architecture, we are proposing a boutique made up of various modules, like fragments that come together to form a coherent unit. Our concept for this temporary boutique is fully in line with the notion of resources. We’ve chosen to use raw materials from the construction sector and industrialised structures that can be accumulated, superimposed and assembled to create a set of modules with a graphic language and urban aesthetic. Each designed component becomes a presentation tool, dedicated to showcasing the products and staging them in the shop.

- Numéro 111