La Fabrique – Rêves de Ville

La Fabrique – Rêves de Ville is a facility of Le Mans Métropole, run by its urban planning department. Designed from the start for the general public, it is a resource center where people come to understand the region's major urban planning and architecture projects. Very quickly, the ecological transition became the guiding thread: today it addresses the sustainable city in the broad sense, including urban planning and architecture of course, but also mobility, waste management, carbon footprint, renewable energy, and nature in the city.

Open Tuesday to Saturday, the venue presents three to five temporary exhibitions a year, each lasting one to four months: at least one major public exhibition a year, along with shorter, more specialized exhibitions for enthusiasts and professionals. Each exhibition comes with an education program (guided tours, workshops, talks, lectures, urban walks in the field), supplemented through the year by shows, lectures, and workshops. Everything is free, usually by registration, with many offerings for families.

Every spring, La Fabrique organizes the Mois de la nature en ville: a month of workshops, talks, visits, and walks, many of them outside the building, often with the city's gardeners, landscapers, and horticulturists. The 2026 edition focused on the city as food provider, with meetings with farmers from the metropolitan area and farm visits.

La Fabrique also hosts a large number of school classes (exhibitions, workshops, eco-delegates from middle and high schools, the CLEAC program of the City of Le Mans, heritage classes from the Pilier Rouge upstairs), exchange sessions for urban professionals (the Sarthe architects' association meets there every month), and events with partners such as Le Mans Université. The entire second floor, a 400 m² space, is occupied by the École des beaux-arts (TALM-Le Mans), whose students work on site, some of them in residence. A small resource center offers books on urban planning and greening cities, with a relaxation corner.

A bit of history

The Art Deco building was constructed in 1936 to house the administrative offices of the gasworks on the Île-aux-Planches, where a new neighborhood is taking shape today. It later became an administrative building for EDF (the French electricity utility): offices occupied the upper floors, and the current exhibition hall once housed the counters where residents of Le Mans came to pay their bills or top up their electricity meter.

Bought by Le Mans Métropole, it opened as La Fabrique – Rêves de Ville in October 2019, then closed almost immediately with the health crisis. The venue only found its rhythm starting in 2021: it has therefore had only about five years of actual activity, and its program keeps growing.