Page 143 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Chapter 5: The construction of the reactor and the scientific groups
and very attached to the outward appearance of the building. We very nearly had a centralised control of all the external sun blinds. Finally we had a high quality functional building. Blackboards were installed at our request on each landing to encourage discussions. The directors’ offices were moved to (and still remain on) the first floor, together with the library (which, alas, has since been moved to the Common building of the ILL-ESRF, somewhat out of the way90). A cafeteria was installed on the top floor;
again a place for discussions, for which there were, of course, blackboards. Everyone could meet the directors there. This has now been replaced with offices. The building was delivered at the end of 1970 which helped in welcoming new staff, which had doubled during the course of the year.
Maier-Leibnitz knew about the French 1951 law requiring
new academic buildings to invest 1% of the construction costs
in original works of art, to be integrated into the architecture. A similar law exists too in Germany. The ILL is not an academic building, hence the French law does not apply in this case. Maier-Leibnitz nonetheless proposed to the steering committee to implement91 it. This was greeted with a varied response, but such was the prestige of Maier-Leibnitz to the committee, it was finally accepted. There only remained finding artists. We were helped in this by Monsieur Alfred Bauer from the Karlsruhe Centre. The first idea was to ask Calder to create a stabile, as he had made
the one placed in front of the station for the city of Grenoble.
90 2018 addition: in 2014 the library was moved again, this time to the Science Building (even more out of the way). In particular, it was made smaller at the expense of some archives and book collections, since most lit- erature search are now online.
91 In this it was a precursor, since 2002 its application was extended to all State administered buildings and public administrative institutions.
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