As this year’s European Capital of Culture, the coastal city in southern France has recently seen heavy investment in public buildings and temporary event spaces along its harbour.
More recently, Japanese designer Kengo Kuma completed the FRAC Marseille arts centre for the Provence Alpes Cotes d’Azur region with a chequered glass facade.
The FRAC (Fond Regional D’art Contemporain) Marseille was designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates as a local art centre for the Provence Alpes Cotes d’Azur (PACA) region of France and it joins buildings by Boeri Studio and Rudy Ricciotti in the city’s harbour-side district.
Photograph by Roland Halbe
Hundreds of opaque glass rectangles create a chequerboard of solid and void across the glazed exterior of the six-storey-high building and are arranged at opposing angles to create a variation between light and shadow.
Photograph by Roland Halbe
“By this treatment, the building is given openness and transparency that are hard to gain from a conventional glass box,” said the architects.
Photograph by Roland Halbe
This uniform facade is punctured in just two places. The first opening is for a street-level window, while the second is an upper-level terrace that can be used for exhibitions, events or meetings.
“What we wanted was not a closed gallery but an elevated street that could work as an exhibition space and a workshop,” added the architects. “In this way inside and outside can be effectively linked, and this is what FRAC has aimed for since its inception.”
Photograph by Nicolas Waltefaugle
The building occupies a triangular site alongside Rue Vincent Leblanc. The larger southern section of the building accommodates the exhibition galleries, a research centre and offices, while the taller northern end contains an auditorium and children’s workshop.
The project description below is from Kengo Kuma and Associates:
Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain Marseille, France 2007-2013
The project of the contemporary art centre (FRAC) for the region Provence Alpes Cotes d’Azur (PACA) is the 3D version of the “museum without walls” invented by André Malraux, famous French writer and politician. It is a museum without a museum, a living and moving place, where the art pieces are in a constant movement and join the logic of diffusion and interaction with the visitors.
Axonometric diagram
KKAA thought the FRAC as a signal in the city, which allows a better visibility to contemporary art.
Site plan
The building stands up as a landmark which identity is clearly asserted.
It is composed with two recognisable parts: » The main body along the street Vincent Leblanc contains the exhibition spaces and documentation centre » A small tower with auditorium and children’s workshop, offers an upper terrace on the main boulevard.
These two clearly identified entities are connected between them by a set of footbridges and are unified by the envelope made by a glass skin, composed with panels with changing opacity.
The building explores the theme of the windows and openings on different scales. KKAA wishes to create a particular space of creation and life, which action and effect is bounded to the entire city, as well as the surrounding district and neighbourhood (cafe-terrace…).
Le Festival Myprovence est un concours de création organisé chaque année par Bouches-du-Rhône Tourisme. Photo ou création graphique, tous ceux qui le souhaitaient ont proposé leurs créations sur le thème « bain de foule ». Guillaume Martial, Benoit Paillé et Alexandre Ciancio ont décroché les premiers prix.
French designer Mathieu Lehanneur has created a chandelier for a château in Marseille, France, that looks like an illuminated rope suspended from the ceiling.
Mathieu Lehanneur used contemporary lighting technology to create a reinterpretation of a chandelier that contrasts with the opulent interior of the eighteenth century building.
Glass tubes containing strips of LEDs puncture the underside of a mezzanine in the château’s entrance hall and seem to hang down like loops of rope.
“It is not an object. It is not a light fitting. It is the light itself that seems to live and circulate in the entrance space, as if stitched onto the building itself,” explains Lehanneur.
The newly renovated Château Borély opened earlier this month and is now home to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, de la Faïence et de la Mode (Museum of Decorative Arts, Earthenware and Fashion).
For the opening of Château Borély, now Musée des Arts Décoratifs, de la Faïence et de la Mode in Marseille, Mathieu Lehanneur has designed a monumental chandelier for the entrance hall. “This chandelier was conceived as a rope of light crossing the ceiling, only bands of light and glass are visible. It is not an object. It is not a light fitting. It is the light itself that seems to live and circulate in the entrance space, as if stitched onto the building itself,” summarised the designer.
An impressive visually, on the boundary between light and special effects, since the conventional ceremonial light has been abandoned to pay tribute to the spirit of the place in a more modern fashion. Built in 1760, the Borély country house was a house for holidays and celebrations where the Borély family welcomed their friends. With this light, Mathieu Lehanneur regains the breath of fresh air that formerly blew over the Provençale house.
Materials: LEDs, tubes of borosilicate glass, luminous control system. Production agency: Eva Albarran & Co
Industrial designer Konstantin Grcic has furnished an apartment in Le Corbusier’s iconic Cité Radieuse housing block with his own products and blown-up pages from a punk fanzine (+ slideshow).
Products shown: Mayday lamp for Flos and Diana side tables for ClassiCon
Appartement N°50 is a privately owned home in the Modernist apartment block in Marseille, France, which retains the original layout and features designed by Le Corbusier in 1952.
Products shown: Pallas table for ClassiCon and Venice armchair for Magis
He also scanned pages of a punk fanzine, expanded them and hung them on the walls of the apartment, creating a deliberately enigmatic contrast with the sparsely decorated interior.
Products shown: Topkapi marble table for Marsotto and 360° chairs for Magis
“The punk motifs are tempting a slightly devious link between two completely unrelated worlds: Le Corbusier’s architecture and punk rock,” says Grcic.
“Without forcing the idea of common grounds, I find that both have a rawness and uncompromising spirit which I have always found compellingly beautiful. Bringing both cultures together in this project felt most inspiring and, in the end, surprisingly fitting.”
Products shown: Medici chairs, side tables and foot stools for Mattiazzi; Mayday lamp for Flos
There is an apartment in Le Corbusier’s famous Cité Radieuse (radiant city) in Marseille, which is almost completely preserved in its original 1952 condition.
Appt.N°50 is privately owned and it is thanks to the generosity and passion of its owner/occupant that the place is made accessible to a wider public during the summer months of each year.
As proof that Le Corbusier’s visionary Unité d’Habitation has the same vibrancy today as when it was originally conceived the apartment is turned into a temporary stage for the ideas and works of contemporary designers.
A short series of scenographic installations has been realized over the years; my project is the third in line following Jasper Morrison (2008) and Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (2010).
Apart from placing a selection of my favorite furniture and objects I decided to tag the walls of the apartment with four blown up scans from an original punk fanzine. The punk motifs are tempting a slightly devious link between two completely unrelated worlds: Le Corbusier’s architecture and punk rock. Without forcing the idea of common grounds, I find that both have a rawness and uncompromising spirit which I have always found compellingly beautiful. Bringing both cultures together in this project felt most inspiring and, in the end, surprisingly fitting.
Exterior of Cité Radieuse
The objects in use are: 360° chairs (by Magis), Topkapi marble table (by Marsotto), Miura bar stool (by Plank), 2-Hands laundry basket (by Authentics), Pro chair (by Flötotto), Jerry stools (by Magis), Mayday lamps (by Flos), Medici chairs, side table and foot stool (all by Mattiazzi), 360° container (by Magis), Venice armchair (by Magis), Pallas table and Diana side tables (by ClassiCon), Myto chair (by Plank), Tip bin and H2O buckets (by Authentics), chair_ONE (by Magis).
In contrast to Le Corbusier ́s enigmatic color scheme of the interior, the intervention is kept in iconic red, black and white.
A cantilevered exhibition floor and an underwater conference suite feature at this archive and research centre, designed by Italian office Boeri Studio and one of several new buildings on Marseille’s waterfront (photographs by Edmund Sumner + slideshow).
The building sits at the water’s edge and was designed by Stefano Boeri as “a place of thought and research that physically embraces the sea”.
“I have always been obsessed with harbour architecture,” says Boeri, describing his interest in naval stations, silos, observation towers and dry docks. “Villa Méditerranée is a construction that combines the characteristics of civic architecture with those of harbour infrastructure and off-shore platforms.”
The architect used a combination of reinforced concrete and steel to create the angular structure of the building, then added glazing across the front and rear elevations to allow views right through.
Porthole windows face out into the sea from the conference centre, which occupies an entire floor below ground level, while the third-floor exhibition gallery is contained within a 36-metre cantilever that frames and shelters a waterfront piazza.
A triple-height entrance hall connects the two main floors. Windows are dotted randomly across its facade, reappearing as skylights and transparent floor panels elsewhere around the exterior.
Villa Méditerranée, Centre International pour le dialogue et les échanges en Méditerranée, Marseille, France
Villa Méditerranée, Centre International pour le dialogue et les échanges en Méditerranée is a circa 9.000 square metre multipurpose building, overlooking the Port of Marseille’s docks, destined to house research activities and documentation spaces on the Mediterranean.
The sea is the main unifying element of the Mediterranean world, sailed by the innumerable travels, migrations and trade; it enhances the meeting and the exchange of the communities that live in its coast.
The sea is the central element of the project: the water square enclosed in the building’s interior is the new public space representing the institution.
It is not simply a basin with ornamental intentions, but rather the union, the means of contact that orients, animates, and organises the building as a whole.
The new Villa Méditerranée, Centre International pour le dialogue et les échanges en Méditerranée is articulated between earth and sea.
The water of the Gulf of Marseilles enters between the building’s two horizontal planes (that of the conference hall and exhibition centre) creating a water square capable of harbouring fishing boats, sail boats or simply serving as a swimming pool and moorings for small pleasure boats.
The building has been thought as a place in dialogue with the surrounded landscape (earth, city, sea…) revealing the site’s values and opening up to the Mediterranean.
A cantilever of 36m is suspended at 14m from the sea level hosting an exhibition area of ca. 1500 sqm, it is enlighten by side windows, roof-lights and walkable glasses in the floor.
A conference centre of 2500 smq is located underwater; here the contact with the sea is possible through portholes. A big vertical entrance hall links together the main spaces and other smaller rooms which host offices, restaurant and other services.
The new construction combines an apparent simplicity with a real richness of spaces, paths and functions. The patio is a fundamental element of the mediterranean architecture and it has been chosen as the central element in the design process. Its ability to create at the same time an interior space and a filter towards the exterior is the key point to read and dialogue with the esplanade j4 and with the entire port. The result is a generous place, flexible and multifunctional, capable to host the unexpected.
Architecture: Boeri Studio (Stefano Boeri, Gianandrea Barreca, Giovanni La Varra) Ivan di Pol, Jean Pierre Manfredi, Alain Goetschy, AR&C; Design Team: Mario Bastianelli (Project Leader), Davor Popovic (project leader building phase), Marco Brega (project leader competition phase) Collaborators: Alessandro Agosti, Marco Bernardini, Daniele Barillari, Fabio Continanza, Massimo Cutini, Angela Parrozzani
Photographer Edmund Sumner has revealed initial images of the filigree-clad Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM) by architect Rudy Ricciotti, which is set to open next month on Marseille’s waterfront (+ slideshow).
Tying in with the French city’s designation as European Capital of Culture 2013, MuCEM is one of several civic buildings set to open there this year and will be dedicated to the history and cultures of the Mediterranean region.
Ornamental concrete shrouds the glazed exterior of the museum like a lacy veil, moderating light through to the building’s two exhibition floors. Meanwhile, an inclined walkway bridges out from the roof the building to meet Fort Saint-Jean – a seventeenth-century stronghold that will also house museum exhibitions – before continuing on towards the Eglise Saint-Laurent church nearby.
Rudy Ricciotti describes the building as a “vertical casbah”, referring to its arrangement on the harbour. “Open to the sea, it draws a horizon where the two shores of the Mediterranean can meet,” he says.
News: the rooftop of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse housing block in Marseille is to open to the public this summer as a contemporary art space masterminded by French designer Ora-Ïto. Originally intended as an outdoor gymnasium for the self-contained community of Cité Radieuse – the first building in Le Corbusier’s influential Unité d’Habitation project – the rooftop gradually fell into disuse and was put up for sale three years ago.
As part of a £6 million restoration jointly funded by Ora-Ïto, the building’s co-owners and the French state, a 1950s extension was removed to reveal a sun deck and shower room with coloured tiles. The exhibition space will be called MAMO, which is short for “Marseille Modulor” and intended as a playful reference to New York’s MoMA, where a major Le Corbusier retrospective will take place this summer.
Set to open in June as part of Marseille’s 2013 Capital of Culture celebrations, MAMO’s first show will be an exhibition by French sculptor Xavier Veilhan, whose Architectones installations are developed specifically for architectural sites.
Zaha Hadid’s 142-metre tower for French shipping company CMA CGM in Marseille is documented in these new images by London photographers Hufton + Crow (+ slideshow).
The 33-storey structure, which was completed in 2011, is currently the tallest building in the city and features a glazed facade with a seam of tinted glass running up through its centre.
The darkened glass tapers outwards at the top, creating the illusion of swelling upper storeys although the building actually has a rectilinear body that only curves outwards at its base.
Located within Marseille’s 480-hectare Euroméditerranée development zone in the north of the city, the CMA CGM Headquarters functions as the primary offices for the transportation company, bringing together over 2400 employees that had previously been located on seven different sites.
Zaha Hadid Architects also designed a 135-metre-long annex building, which is joined to the tower with a curving glass bridge.
In 2010, when the project was nearing completion, Marseilles studio Exmagina shot a time-lapse movie showing the surrounding activity over the course of one day – watch the movie.
Foster + Partners a imaginé pour le pavillon du Vieux Port de Marseille cette installation d’une grande simplicité et d’une grande efficacité avec des panneaux en miroirs. Cette structure de 46 mètres sur 22 présentée dans le cadre de ‘Marseille, Capitale Européenne de la Culture 2013′ est à découvrir dans la suite.
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