Musee d’Art in Nantes redesigned by Stanton Williams
Stanton Williams’ transformation of the Musee d’Art in Nantes, the sixth largest museum outside of Paris, has just started on site and is due to open again to the public in 2016.
Patrick Richard, Stanton Williams' director
It's the practice's first project in France, uniting several historic buildings with a new monolithic extension clad in thin layers of marble and glass developed in collaboration with glass manufacturer Saint Gobain. Stanton Williams' director Patrick Richard talks with Cate St Hill about the challenges of mixing the old with the new.
How did the project come about?
This is our first competition and project in France. The cultural ambition in Nantes is very high so in some ways designing a museum there is almost better than designing one in Paris. I think more than 150 people applied -- big-name practices such as Libeskind. We made the shortlist of five teams and were the only non-French one, so we thought there'd be no way we're going to get it. But in the end we won the competition fair and square: the jury was unanimous. The project played to two strengths in the practice, one being working with historical buildings and the other that we have 30 years' experience in exhibition design. Museums are very much a part of the DNA of our practice.
The front entrance of the museum will be opened up to form a new public space
How have you connected the existing building of the Musee d'Art de Nantes with the new additions?
The current site includes this 19th-century 'palais' or 'temple of culture' and a chapel, which has been gutted and is now used like Tate Modern's Turbine Hall for art installations. Our project is very much about how you tie together buildings of different periods with a new extension. For us the extension should be a continuity of the space not a look-atme, stand-out building. The obvious thing would have been to connect them with a glass bridge. But we wanted it to be a bit more intriguing so people hardly notice that they are moving from one place to another. The two buildings have a strong dialogue, they have their own language, but it is the similar materials and spatial qualities that tie them together. There is not the shock of the old and the new.
What did you take as your reference point for the new extension?
The project unites the current museum with a new extension and chapel
Like any of our projects, we don't follow a style or strict approach: for us it is very much about the context and getting the ingredients from the site. And one of the things that is specific to Nantes is Tuffeau stone, which is a very fine, whiteish stone that most of the chateaux are made of. At the competition stage, one of the first things we did was phone a stone association and find out everything we could about this stone. The whiteness struck us on site; it ties together all these different buildings from different eras and there was a feeling that they all worked together. But we were clearly told that it shouldn't be used for a new building because it is too fragile and weathers too quickly; Nantes cathedral is permanently under scaffolding. We couldn't actually use it but we wanted to keep that monolithic aspect, so for the extension we used a white marble from Portugal.
Tell us a bit more about the south facade of the extension, developed with Saint Gobain?
The south facade is a different game. We wanted to play with translucency. We already named the stone at the competition stage so there was a strong idea from day one.
In medieval times, before glass, builders would have used alabaster, so we thought marble could be interesting if it was cut thinly. The panels of marble are about 4mm deep and are placed between two pieces of glass. We are the first to have done it this way, and I think Saint Gobain is very interested to market it as a product. When you get light through it, the white marble looks very white and all the veins start to appear. With all the light from the south, it could become quite monumental.
