|
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
A safe room spread over 700 square meters. Not directly accessible, but rather left aside. Left aside not for lack of interest, but, on the contrary, because of its overwhelming importance. The most secret, most intimate space of the building, designed to store valuables, particularly money. As time went by, and as capacities grew, telephone switchboards, electrical panels, heating and cooling systems penetrated the building by eating into this space. Preserved from men, but not from infrastructure, it kept its intimacy but lost its aura. While still remaining off limits, it had been overburdened.
The project intends to revert the safe room's secular destiny by besieging it from two sides. First, its prestige had to be restired. It had to become "important" once again. Yet, not by reverting to its former intimacy and secrecy. On the contrary, it had to become anonymous, public, by becoming a museum. It would now show what it had previously kept away. It would exhibit what it had until then kept secret. For this purpose, it had to be alleviated, freed of the additions that had been grafted on it. Then, it would exhibit what was left, instead of storing it and piling it up. It would thus turn objects into documents, and display them in the emptied space. With, at its center, the most monumental of all objects: the "steel fort" itself, with its three stories and four doors.
The entire concept rests on oppositions: center-periphery, narrative-object, calm-movement, brightness-darkness, light-shadow…
|
 |
|
