Hugues Fontenas Architectes Lorraine archaeology preservation and study centre in Metz competition

client

DRAC Lorraine / OPPIC

architect

Hugues Fontenas

assistant architect

Antoine Wattel

engineering

Egis Grand-Est

ergonomics

Actions Industrie

floor area

3 270 m²

cost

4 150 000 € H.T.

calendar

2013 – competition

architectural design

A building designed as a process tool around an interior street that serves as a connection for all transit operations and treatment of archaeological material. At the scale of the urban fringe and facing an open landscape, the building consists of two mineral masses of ribbed concrete of different colours. The composition of these concrete envelopes and the general design of the building contribute to passive climate stability for archaeological collections.

competition images

ATOM Graphic

Exceeding expectations
Develop each project following a re-evaluation of both programme and anticipated results. Reply beyond the expectations of the programme. The principal architectural objective is to be found in the research of added, unexpected qualities.

Evolving surfaces
Architecture to be also conceived as terrains to be occupied in the future by still uncertain or improbable uses. Architecture as “reverse ruins” in an upturned archaeology that facilitates or suggests inevitable transformations. Therefore, when it might be tempting to be just spectacular, never hesitate to be simple and complex.

Comforts
Pay particular attention to all the complexity factors – functional, technical, regulatory, economic, aesthetic – and use them as a basis for future comforts. Distinguish structures, enclosures or equipment to consider temporal aspects of the project in a prospect of reversibility and diversity of uses.

Artificiality
Advocate and assert the profound artificiality, the non-naturalness of architecture. Conceive architecture in a grey ecology without naivety and in creative phase with the contradictions of our environment.

Aspirations
Associate production and research in resonance with an analysis of actual facts. Remain independent in thought to stimulate, guide and increase the pertinence of a project. Propose reality as an aspiration to do differently.

Founded in 2006, the office has developed its activity mainly in the field of cultural facilities with a strong interest and expertise in programmes related to the exhibition and preservation of all types of collections, from archaeology to contemporary art. Hugues Fontenas also teaches and conducts research on themes strongly connected to work in the office.