CN D Pantin
Refurbishment of the public space - CN D (Centre National de la Danse), former Victor Hugo Administrative Center building (1965-1972) built by Jacques Kalisz
Under the leadership of the artistic direction of Mathilde Monnier, the National Dance Center of Pantin opens to a new practice of its public spaces.
Its redevelopment opens the spaces of the ground floor. Projecting the Art Center for Dance on the city of Pantin and the banks of the Ourq Canal.
The vast «palace of the people», originally designed by the architect Jacques Kalisz, is transformed punctually to give to the public, artists, dancers and users a platform of invention and work, a new look at the movement and on art, another landscape of the show.
The program includes the grouping of reception and ticketing in a wing of the building oriented towards the main flows of the city of Pantin, a restaurant, a bookstore, a flexible exhibition room, an open dance and projection area on the atrium and therefore in a direct relationship with the public.
All new programs are articulated with the monumental atrium which finds its own function of connection of the different uses. The media library has a very large amount of archives of historical and international importance.
The space devices set up by Jacques Kalisz inside the building, following regular and intelligible spaces, whose structural repercussions compose an unparalleled interior landscape, in which northern light and southern light could qualify a particular atmosphere, a complex, rich environment.
On the ground floor, it’s here story of clearance, transparency. Transparency that tends to make the birth of the staircase readable, iconic sculpture, masterful and captivating. At the same level of the building, the structure that qualifies the space in the northern part is further back than on the upper floors. This condition is interesting, it gives to the stairs a central position, as the anchorage point of the building, as the hinge point, a pivot, a circulation.
It is therefore, to resonate with the two sides of the story of the megastructure of reinforced concrete proudly standing between the Ourq Canal and the Rue Victor Hugo. It is about being able to dialogue with the architecture of Jacques Kalisz, in a reopening of the Ground floor of the building while bringing a new degree of richness and subtlety.
