Hugues Fontenas Architectes Scenography for the exhibition La ville magique

client

LaM, Lille Metropolitan Museum for Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art, Villeneuve-d’Ascq.

exhibition curators

Sophie Lévy, chief-curator
Jeanne-Bathilde Lacourt, modern art curator
Marie-Amélie Senot, assistant curator

architect

Hugues Fontenas

assistant architect

Nolwenn Caillard

graphic design

Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié

floor area

860 m²

cost

80 000 € HT

calendar

completed 2012

design

The aim of the exhibition “The Magic City” sought to offer visitors an insight into the world of urban mythologies in the art of the 1920s and 1930s.
The scenographic design relies on the use of a one simple element (a parallelepiped) and variations (material, positioning, etc.) that accompany the flow of the exhibition. The arrangement of these easily installed elements vary from very strict (the “Manhatta” area) to more mysterious and labyrinthine (“The Theatre of the Unconscious”).
The project relies also on the prominent use of cinema as a perfect means of immersing the visitor in the world of urban fairytales. The films are presented independently and in situations of confrontation echoing the “collage” theme recurrent throughout the exhibition (“Metropolis” and “The Big Sleep”).
Exhibition signage was designed to reinforce the urban universe using light panels similar to LED-illuminated commercial signs and posters pasted directly on the walls. The Akzidenz-Grotesk font (used throughout) and colour (exclusively black, white and grey) accentuate the feeling of being in a modernist urban world, although on a in a contemporary note.

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.