Bordeaux City Council

Assistance to the client for commissioning the energy-saving improvements to the Natural History Museum of Bordeaux.

Assistance during the STUDIES phase/SUPERVISING THE WORKS/ENTRY INTO SERVICE and the OPERATING phase/MONITORING CONSUMPTION in the first few years of operation.

It became essential to rehabilitate the Museum of Bordeaux (one of the first created in France), both to bring the building up to required building, safety and collection conservation standards, and to propose a museography matching the expectations and new uses of the public.

The operation consisted in rehabilitating the historic Hôtel de Lisleferme building (late 19th century), and creating a new buried structure under the building opening out onto the public gardens of Bordeaux in order to have a new reception area in a larger space and to double the area devoted to temporary exhibitions, while preserving the integrity of the existing building and showcasing it.

The total floor area of the rehabilitated building is 2,950 m². The rehabilitation work started in 2015 and the museum reopened to the public in 2018. The architectural project of Sébastien Loiseau (Basalt architecture) ingeniously combined the collection conservation and public reception standards while also minimizing energy consumption.

A heat recovery unit fitted in the sewerage system makes this building work emblematic and is consistent with the establishment’s environmental protection and biodiversity plan.

The energy system comprises:

• 2 thermofrigorific pumps that simultaneously handle the building’s heating and cooling requirements (more particularly to maintain the temperature and hygrometry levels required for conservation of the work);
• A series of heat recovery/dissipation exchangers in the wastewater, installed in a main sewer located at the foot of the building.

SERMET SUD OUEST assisted the teams of the City Council’s Buildings department then those of Bordeaux Métropole (merged in 2016) with a view to ensuring that the building, and particularly its systems, were designed, installed and tested to meet the performance requirements imposed by the awarding authority and that they could be operated to best advantage. The main stages of the assignment were:

• Phase 1: critical analysis of the prime contractor’s project, the working designs and the monitoring of the work up to the entry into service of the facilities;
• Phase 2: assisting the awarding authority in operating the facility and monitoring consumption during the first few years of operation.