Une maison de l'emploi, c'est quoi ? Comment dessiner cette machine infernale imaginée pour lutter contre le ch?mage, regroupant sous un guichet unique le maximum de structures dédiées à cet objectif ? Faut-il rester dans l'économie de bouts de chandelle, afficher une prudente neutralité, adopter l'asepsie des tristes comptoirs de l'ANPE ou des Assedic d'autrefois ? Ou faut-il au contraire briller, exposer l'activité et peindre la vie en rose ?%Unemployment is a subject not many people like to think about. Regardless of which, Rudy Ricciotti's employment office in Saint-Etienne is not your run-of-the-mill faceless public utility. Whatever else it might do or fail to do (it has only been operating for six months), it succeeds in putting a cheerful face on a social reality that is gloomy to say the least. Were the building small, it would be perfect; unhappily, its size proclaims the proportions of the problem that it addresses. The 4500 m~2 of the white concrete parallelepiped group services for people looking for a job, for training or information, for help in starting up a business, as well as those for employers seeking to recruit. Inside, a skylight padded by EFTE cushions runs the entire length, bringing abundant light into the atrium space, which rises full height, animating four levels of offices. The atrium floor is landscaped: palms add relief and luxuriance. The skylight compensates the relative absence of glazing on street fronts, a counter stance to what is usual in office blocks. The high, largely opaque external walls, rounded at one end, remind me of the Entrepots frigorifiques in the Tolbiac area of Paris, a building Ricciotti saw a lot of when he worked next door to it. Their sparse openings borrow the obliquely-positioned bean-shaped motif made famous by the painter Claude Viallat, one of the founders of the Supports/Surfaces group, which flourished in the late 60s and early 70s. By day, from a distance the walls have an opaque presence, marked by the organically shaped openings, which are positioned in a regular pattern in ascending array. At night, the openings are lit red, green and blue - creating a light show for passersby.
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