Cultural collage: veiled and screened in a skin of metal louvres, this mediatheque is a robust collage of volumes that enlivens a dull public realm.

The rise of the French multimedia library began in the 1980s. Now most French towns can boast a mediatheque and they have become an increasingly important local focus for various cultural and civic activities. They also provide opportunities for imaginative patronage and architectural experimentation.

Asked to design a mediatheque for Vaise, an unremarkable district of Lyons, Jean-Louis Godivier responded with characteristic brio. The site is a strategic prow-like corner plot in Place Valmy, an urban square in some need of civic propriety. Godivier's building is a compressed collage of glass volumes wrapped in layers of slatted metal screens and brisesoleil. During the day these have an essentially hermetic quality, but at night the life of the building and its activities are dramatically revealed, as light pulsates through the diaphanous sheaths of glass and metal.

The building draws back from the end of the site to form a parvis planted with trees, which will hopefully become a well-used and cared-for public space. Nearby, a new metro station provides a direct link to the city centre, adding to the climate of public realm improvement. Godivier identifies and teases out the various elements of the programme (such as library spaces, auditorium, cafe and offices) and then proceeds to conflate and superimpose them on the tight site. The outcome is a kind of architectural chimera, in which assorted component parts are combined to make a mutated whole. So, for instance, the steel panelled hull of the auditorium bulges out through the main glass facade on to the square, and the box containing a reading room and administrative offices totters precariously above the building's entrance canopy, itself supported by fashionably angular pilotis. The by fashionably angular pilotis. The composition is further fragmented and layered by a perforated concrete wall painted a soupy terra cotta, that connects the mediatheque with the existing urban fabric on the south side of the site. The red wall also demarcates the more domestic and private part of the building; behind are apartments, loggias and terraces for use by mediatheque personnel.

The main bulk of the building is enclosed in an undulating glass wall, screened and protected by the metal brise-soleil. As with the melded and mutated external geometry, internal spaces wrap and warp around each other with elegant fluidity. The entrance hall enfolds the blind box of the auditorium, like a stream running around a pebble. Open to the town, the entrance hall is a dignified and reassuring double-height space separated from the library areas by a glass wall. The children's library at first floor level overlooks the entrance hall. Above is the main adult library and reading room, with good views over the square. Ancillary and service functions are deftly slotted in the left-over space.

The open plan volumes of the libraries are organized and defined by pieces of movable furniture. A large oculus brings a cylinder of light down into the main library, bathing the interior in a softly luminous glow. Silk screening on the external glass walls helps to reduce glare while preserving a sense of openness and transparency to encourage casual use. Like a series of fishtanks, the interior is constantly animated by the comings and goings of building users and staff.

Combining intimacy and accessibility underpinned by a strong civic awareness.

Godivier's vigorous vision of state sponsored culture is, inevitably, worlds away from the stern paternalism of the nineteenth century, which bequeathed France so many libraries and public institutions. Informal and inclusive, Vaise's modest mediatheque invites and rewards discovery.