The first times ...
Each project is unique, and if not in its program, then in its topographical or social context, in the determination of its owner or the personality of its builder (and their respective teams), in the presence or absence of future users, in its brevity or spread, and so on… Nevertheless, we try to bring our experience and know-how to bear on in an original way.
Some projects are first times, but more rarely, they are the result of an encounter between an architect (or client) and an artist. Whether the encounter was fortuitous or the result of a long process, it doesn’t matter. The artist brings a poetic shift to the subject, a detail or an ensemble, which turns the whole project into a unique experience that sometimes takes us into lesser-known territory.
Three projects – among others – have enabled us to work on these first times, when we have to reinvent and readapt everything to escort these new visions and make them work in the scenographic and architectural project.
2006 – The Claude Levi-Strauss theater at the Musée Branly in Paris /architect AJN / curtain design by Naoki Takizawa for Issey Miyake.
The auditorium is excavated in the middle of the foyer level. With no immediate walls, it is topped by a single ceiling and continues to the outside via a planted tier. A specific set of curtains is used to assemble and separate spaces and functions. Working in collaboration with Takizawa (and the various specialists, weavers, shapers, etc.) on systems of patiences, acoustic characteristics, storage, thicknesses and materials was intense and crucial for these curtains, which went beyond the realm of simple stage hangings to become genuine architectural elements.
2013 – Le Métaphone, 9/9bis music venue in Oignies / architect Hérault-Arnod / sound design Louis Dandrel for Diasonic
Right from the definition study at the start of the project, the hall (among other elements of the re-qualification of this former mining site) had to be sound. Obviously, as a hall dedicated to contemporary music, but also outside ! This wasn’t Diasonic’s first experience of sound on buildings (Clepsydre sonore at the Géode at La Villette in Paris, tinkling facade at the Forum des Sciences in Villeneuve d’Ascq). Here, we were able to work together to develop an architectural skin in which certain panels (glass, wood, metal, etc.) are equipped with vibrators, and 12 specially-designed instruments (organs, percussion, xylophones, cymbals, rain sticks, etc.) installed on the outside walls of the entrance porch and connected to a control room from which this veritable urban musical instrument can be played and programmed.
2020 – Normandy Memory, a memorial show in Colombelles / architect Clément Blanchet / scenographer Stéphane Roy
This project is a unique experience, with the creation of a tailor-made mobile theater around the show. Nearly a real theater, with homogeneous visibility and places for persons with reduced mobility, a stage and backstage area, a grill and lighting towers, control rooms… so that actors and technicians can keep the show moving.
All without compromising the infinite possibilities of a scenario and staging still being written.
