The budget for the future BnF site in Amiens is approaching 100 million euros

“The estimated budget for the project is set at 96,7 million current euros and will be completed before the end of 2029,” the institution said in a press release.

"It's a big budget, which is expected, of around 100 million euros. It's what we call a major cultural project. But everything doesn't come down to the budget," declared during a press conference in Amiens the president of the BnF Laurence Engel.

She revealed the project selected at the end of the architectural competition. It is signed by the Parisian firm TVK (Pierre Alain Trévelo and Antoine Viger-Kohler), associated with the Londoners Carmody Groarke.

TVK is known for the renovation, inaugurated in 2013, of Place de la République in Paris, which notably extended the space reserved for pedestrians and drastically reduced car traffic.

“This project stood out for its very high architectural quality which has always been part of the history and identity of the BnF,” said the library, heir to that of the kings of France.

It has carried out two very large-scale projects over the last 30 years. First the construction of the François-Mitterrand library, in the south-east of Paris, inaugurated in 1995. Then the complete renovation of its cradle in the center of the capital, the Richelieu site, completed in 2021.

The two had cost 1,2 billion and 261 million euros respectively.

The city of Amiens must accommodate two buildings on the former site of its Northern Hospital.

One will store, in much more favorable conditions than today, newspapers and periodicals (more than 300.000 titles) currently spread over several sites. The other will house the offices and workshops of the National Press Conservatory thus created in Amiens.

This Conservatory “will make it possible to continue the digitization of these often fragile documents and to facilitate their consultation and their dissemination”, indicated the BnF.

“A new highly technological collections store, fully robotic, and operating in a rarefied oxygen atmosphere and without active air conditioning, will promote the best preservation of documents, particularly the most fragile,” explained the BnF.

The project provides for “a useful surface area of ​​approximately 10.000 m³, distributed between a 6.000 m³ conservation building offering a capacity of 280 linear kilometers, and nearly 2.000 m³ of workshop spaces for the restoration and digitization of collections” .

Ms. Engel, quoted in a press release, praised "an ambitious, embodied architectural style, seeking harmony with its urban environment, meeting all our technical requirements."