The birth of a form.
This proposed multipurpose room questions the founding principles of the traditional architectural approach. Construction generally results from an addition, that is, a supply of materials onto a given sight. This building, however, generates an opposite effect: it gives the impression of being born from a subtraction, from a reduction.
In the same way that a stonemason imagines the granite block placed before him, this initial rectangular volume appears to have been carved, hollowed, twisted, flattened, and sharpened to bring to life the most just form.
This is to say that the treatment of the soil and its foundation is paramount here. Volume is enclosed in relation to the natural level of the terrain so that the room fits best into the horizon of its neighboring buildings and provides a ground-level opening onto the garden below. This attention to the ease of circulation, which goes all the way to the conception of the main stage, equally incorporates handicap accessibility thanks to the unique play of internal ramps.
The dominating material for this project is white concrete, which generates a luminous effect to amplify the weightlessness of the structure’s angles and volumes. To dress the high-volume sides, the designer Joran Briand designed a metallic canvas to stylize one of the symbols of the UK: the ermine.
