The Auditorium and Music and Dance School Jean-Claude Casadesus in Leers, France, designed by ateliers O-S architectes, combines a 150-seat auditorium, rehearsal spaces, teaching rooms, shared facilities, and an upper-level reserve for a future media library within a compact civic building shaped by acoustic constraints, domestic scale, and the material continuity of pale brick, timber, concrete, and zinc.

Auditorium and Music and Dance School Jean-Claude Casadesus Technical Information

• Architects: ateliers O-S architectes
• Location: 7 quartier rue Franklin, 59115 Leers, France
• Gross Area: 1,302 m² | 14,015 sq. ft.
• Project Years: 2021 – 2026
• Photographs: © Cyrille Weiner

The project is conceived as a true community resource: a platform for exchange and interaction between the city, users, organizations, and all stakeholders involved in bringing this facility and its outdoor spaces to life.

– ateliers O-S architectes

Civic Presence in a Residential Fabric

The cultural facility is inserted into a low-rise district of detached and collective housing, where gardens, parked cars, and modest pitched roofs define the everyday urban condition. Rather than opposing this fabric with an autonomous object, the building works through scale, roof geometry, and material familiarity. Its massing reads as an aggregation of simplified domestic volumes, adjusted to contain a public program without overwhelming the neighboring houses.

The south elevation, facing Franklin Street, carries the building’s primary civic gesture. A concave recess cuts into the pale brick facade at ground level, pulling the forecourt toward the glazed lobby and turning entry into a spatial hinge between street and interior. This curved threshold is significant because it avoids the frontal solemnity often associated with small civic buildings, replacing it with a controlled compression of public space.

The facade combines long, fine courses of white terracotta brick with restrained openings and areas of openwork masonry. The tall arched window and woven brick screen introduce depth without excessive formal emphasis, while the pitched roof profiles connect the building to the residential skyline. The result is not a disguised institution, but a civic structure that gains presence through proportion, threshold, and material discipline.

Programmatic Organization and Future Adaptability

The plan is organized around three main components: the auditorium and rehearsal hall, the music and dance school, and a reserve space for a future media library. This distribution produces a clear sectional division. The southern part addresses the street with reception, teaching, and administrative spaces, while the larger double-height hall occupies the northern side, where its acoustic enclosure and volumetric depth can be handled with fewer openings.

Circulation is conceived as a legible sequence rather than a residual network. From the entrance hall, users move into the music school across two levels, with classrooms, practice rooms, collective teaching spaces, offices, and support areas arranged around direct corridors and stairs. The auditorium is accessible from the ground-floor circulation zone, allowing it to function both as a rehearsal room for the municipal wind ensemble and as a public performance space with fixed seating capacity.

The upper-level reserve for a future media library is provided with independent access via a stair and elevator along the west facade. This decision is more than a technical provision; it separates future cultural programming from the school’s daily operations. The building can therefore absorb another public use without requiring substantial spatial reconfiguration, a pragmatic form of adaptability that is embedded in the circulation logic from the outset.

Material Strategy, Structure, and Environmental Performance

The material palette is structured around the complementary roles of mass, enclosure, and tactility. White terracotta brick forms the public exterior, with openwork masonry introducing filtered light and a porous edge in selected areas. Zinc roofing gives the pitched volumes a precise outline, while board-formed concrete, timber floors, plywood elements, ceramic tiles, and acoustic linings shape the interiors through a measured alternation of hardness and warmth.

The construction combines masonry walls with steel framing where larger spans are required, particularly for the auditorium and the future media library volume. This hybrid system reflects the demands of the program: masonry provides mass, durability, and acoustic resistance, while steel allows broader, less interrupted interiors for collective use. The auditorium benefits from this structural clarity, with its long-span roof allowing a flexible hall that can shift between rehearsal and performance configurations.

Environmental performance is approached through the logic of construction rather than through visible technological display. Bio-based insulation is paired with the thermal mass of concrete and masonry, helping regulate comfort within a compact envelope. Compliance with RE2020 E+C- level E2C1 indicates attention to energy and carbon criteria, but the architecture expresses this agenda through durable assemblies, controlled openings, and the long-term adaptability of the plan.

Acoustic Architecture and Interior Atmosphere

Acoustics shape the project at multiple scales. Toward residential edges, the facades become more introverted, with fewer and more carefully controlled openings to limit sound transmission. High-performance frames and the depth of the envelope support this strategy, while the building’s placement of the auditorium to the north reduces exposure between the most acoustically active spaces and the street-facing public areas.

Inside the auditorium, sound control becomes architectural expression. Timber slats line the lower walls, perforated acoustic panels occupy upper surfaces, and concrete elements contribute mass and spatial definition. The double-height volume accommodates both tiered audience seating and flat-floor rehearsal arrangements, while a plywood-clad balcony and expressed roof structure add depth to the section without competing with the acoustic purpose of the room.

The smaller interiors adopt a more domestic scale suited to daily musical education. Teaching rooms use soft wall colors, curtains, resilient flooring, and circular acoustic panels to create controlled yet informal settings for practice. The lobby and circulation areas extend this atmosphere through timber-block flooring, board-formed concrete, translucent glazing, globe lighting, and a curved tiled reception desk, giving the building a civic interior that remains close to the scale of individual learning and repeated use.

© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner© Cyrille Weiner

About ateliers O-S architectes

ateliers O-S architectes is an architecture practice based in Paris. For the Auditorium and Music and Dance School Jean-Claude Casadesus in Leers, the studio developed a contextual, functional, and sustainable approach that combines architecture and landscape through legible volumes, controlled materiality, careful proportions, acoustic performance, and long-term adaptability.

Credits and Additional Notes

1. Structural engineers: I + A
2. MEP consultants: WOR
3. Landscape designers: Faar
4. Client: Ville de Leers
5. Special foundations: Soletanche Bachy FS
6. Structural works: TOMASINI
7. Steel frame: FOURCADE
8. Roofing and waterproofing: Nord France Couverture
9. Brick facades: BYN
10. Exterior joinery and metalwork: Kyrielis
11. Interior timber joinery, partitions, suspended ceilings: ROUZE
12. Parquet flooring: Parqueterie de la Lys
13. Tiling and wall tiles: CRI
14. Painting: Roger Decaux
15. Resilient flooring: Jean Vandendriessche
16. Elevator: ORONA
17. HVAC and plumbing: SANTERNE
18. Electrical CFO/CFA: EG Nord
19. Roads, utilities, and green spaces: SBG Assainissement
20. Landscaping and green spaces: JARBEAU
21. Economist and quantity surveyor: Moteec;
22. Acoustics: ECKEA
23. Photographer: Cyrille Weiner