Among recent French architectural offerings, those of cultural institutions have risen recently into prominence, often featuring remarkably high-quality designs. ARTINFO France has selected our top five such architectural projects — including both brand-new constructions and major renovations of existing structures — focusing on those that offer a stimulating setting and long-lasting foundations to an institution’s needs.
Cité du Cinéma
From a distance, this bright new film production center in Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, resembles a cathedral, with its monumental nave and lateral wings. But it’s actually an old power plant from 1933, renovated by architects Reichen & Robert & Associés at a cost of €140 million ($184 million). Completed in 2012 thanks to the efforts of director and producer Luc Besson, the Cité du Cinéma now contains the necessary infrastructure for every aspect of film production — a first in France, making it a potential rival to Italy’s Cinecittà and to Hollywood.
The heart of the design is the machine room (720 feet long, with 80-foot ceilings), restored to its original shine and topped with a double glass roof. On either side are new or updated buildings, organized around central patios, which house film sets, offices, manufacturing workshops, an auditorium, a restaurant, and a building for the training of future film technicians at the École Normale Supérieure Louis Lumière (which was relocated from Noisy-le-Grand).
The strength of this renovation comes from the perfect harmony between the building’s new function and the impressive size of the industrial structure — whose spirit the architects decided to respect by using colors and materials close to the originals. The design was planned to make maximum use of the pre-existing spaces, including an extensive basement measuring over 100,000 square feet. Some industrial relics, such as a 16-foot-tall turbine, were even preserved as reminders of the power plant’s history. As an architectural conversion, it’s really a beautiful success story, and one that could be applied to other abandoned buildings — such as, on a smaller scale, Jean Prouvé’s Maison du Peuple in Clichy.
FRAC Bretagne in Rennes
Thirty years after former culture minister Jack Lang established the Fonds Régionaux d’Art Contemporain (FRAC), Regional Collections of Contemporary Art, Brittany has scored an ambitious space for exhibition and education in the urban development zone of Beauregard, just northwest of Rennes. French architecture firm Odile Decq Benoît Cornette was selected for the project in 2004, and the completed 50,000-square-foot building, which cost €18 million ($24 million), opened last May.
Architect Odile Decq chose a design with a simple appearance: a block of black steel and anthracite gray concrete divided into two unequal parts. The dark, closed-off exterior contrasts with the interior spaces, which are open and modular. Horizontal and vertical glass openings lead the viewer’s eye toward the outside. The building has four levels organized around a central atrium, and visitors’ movement is fluid and dynamic. A few panels of red lacquer create a vivid glow.
As she did in her design for MACRO, Rome’s contemporary art museum, Decq thought long and hard about the flow of foot traffic. “It has become just as important as the collection,” she told journalist Caroline Taret three months before the FRAC Bretagne opened. “The path allows visitors to choose to enter the exhibition rooms if they so wish, like a multiple-choice system that doesn’t impose a pre-determined agenda.”
FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in Marseille
Marseille also has a new FRAC, located in the heart of the city near the Place Joliette and the Euroméditerranée business district. Designed by Japanese firm Kenga Kuma & Associates and costing €20 million ($26 million), the L-shaped building was supposed to be ready in December, but its completion has been postponed by construction delays.
However, we can already admire its “pixelated” façade — a real architectural feat, made of 1,500 glass elements of different degrees of opaqueness, which are superimposed over one another like translucent layers of paint. The airy walls filter light inside the building and reflect it on the outside, letting the structure blend in with its urban environment. As Kengo Kuma described in a FRAC press release about the project, this façade expresses the “multidirectional and multi-faceted” light of the Mediterranean. Halfway up, the tower opens onto an “urban” terrace, made (unusually) of wood, which will serve as a meeting and performance space with views of the streetscape.
Louvre-Lens
On December 12, the Louvre’s new outpost in northern France, the Louvre-Lens, finally opened its doors. And, after a long wait, it doesn’t disappoint. Designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Japanese firm SANAA, the museum building feels almost invisible — a horizon of glass and steel, or a mirror reflecting the surrounding landscape and floating like a mirage. It is modest, open, and readable, making it an anti-architectural statement, a discreet alternative to the palatial splendor of its older Parisian sibling.
Coming in just above ground level, the building’s design pays homage to the light of the north of France, as well as to the mining history in the region (the building’s shape is borrowed from the small houses of the miners). Most of all, it honors the museum’s collection, which it doesn’t try to compete with. At a length of 1,200 feet, a total area of over 300,000 square feet, and with a 50-acre park, the Louvre-Lens is a balanced and harmonious exhibition space that’s easy to explore. Only its cost — €150 million ($197 million) — steps a bit out of bounds.
The Louvre’s Islamic Arts Department
The bronze honeycomb roof of the Louvre’s new Islamic Arts department has inspired many comparisons: to a dune, a wave, a glass hill, a dragonfly’s wing, or a flying carpet. As of September, it houses the entirely reorganized Islamic Arts department in the Louvre’s Visconti courtyard. The superstructure, by architects Rudy Ricciotti and Mario Bellini, verges on cliché, but ultimately fits coherently into the preexisting palace and represents the completion of an architectural and museographical challenge.
To make enough room for the artworks, the architects had to dig 40 feet deep into the Visconti courtyard, at peril of collapsing the facades of the Louvre. Supporting its “veil,” which weighs almost 150 tons (!), required eight slightly inclined pillars, each 12 inches in diameter, along with 8,000 ultra-light tubes. Now, within the 50,000 square feet of space beneath its open framework roof extend several centuries of rich and varied Islamic heritage from the department’s collections, ranging from Asia to Spain and including Umayyad, Andalusian, Ottoman, Persian, and Mamluk cultures.