The Pierresvives building in Montpellier, France, combines Herault regional government’s administrative departments with an archive integrating over 60 kilometres of storage racks at optimum conditions to preserve its documents and collections. Located in the La Paillade district in the west of Montpellier with a local population of 25,000 residents living in social housing that had no civic spaces of their own, Pierrevives also introduced new public places for its community including a multimedia library, auditorium, exhibition spaces, reading rooms and children’s zone; integrating its local residents with the rest of the city and providing state of the art facilities for learning.