Hugues Fontenas Architectes Storage facility for the Army Museum in Versailles

client

Musée de l’armée Paris

architect

Hugues Fontenas

assistant architects

Laure Lienard

engineering

TEC.CO (structure), Espace temps (mechanics).

floor area

370 m²

building cost

746 000 € HT

calendar

2017-2020

program

Storage rooms for metal collections and large format collections.

architectural design

LIKE A GHOST BUILDING
Transforming a former barracks building (kitchen and canteen) into a storage facility for sensitive collections.
For this change of destination, doors and windows linked to the former activities are abandonned.
Prevent natural light from entering.
Reduce access.
Close all existing openings:
– with grey bricks in the millstone walls;
– with white bricks in the red brick walls.
Create a new opening, now the only access for large-format art works.
Insert in this building, now almost completely blind, an envelope made of isothermal panels to guarantee the stability of the internal climate.
Insulate, fold up, extract from the environment to preserve inert objects.
Like a ghost building.

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.