Its depths still harbor a modular black room of 400 m2et a 144 seat auditorium

Intended to make Metz a cultural capital radiating across borders, the Centre Pompidou Metz, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban with Jean de Gastines, this sensational architecture. Located two steps from the station on a former rail wasteland, this curiosity claims, according to Jean-Luc Bohl, President of Metz Métropole, "to the status of work of art".

Dedicated wholly to the exhibitions and temporary events, this art centre rely for much of its programming on the Fund of 60,000 works held by the Parisian institution. In a soft and playful form, the building houses a strictly organized design tool. Three long galleries of exposure are superimposed on 7, 12 and 17 metres high, deployed around a tower of hexagonal movement equipped with a very large capacity elevator (9,000 kilograms). Each presents itself as a tunnel 80 metres long on the sky and landscape by glazed to the ends of same template, they are distinguished by their orientation: the highest aims the Saint-Etienne Cathedral and the historic town, the intermediate is turned to the famous station of Metz and the Imperial City of the German timethe lower looks at the future urban extensions. Their configuration provides a striking optical effect, vision panoramic fading for the benefit of a focused view in hindsight. The Cathedral appears significantly higher from the bottom of the upper gallery, as entry in a long view. In these three tunnels of 14 metres wide on top 5, natural light combines with lighting artificial ceiling, divided into 65 variable areas to target the long walls and the false floor on slab admitting up to 1,000 kilograms per square metre of load operation.

Superimposed galleries

The range of galleries is in foot a large room of 21 metres high to host huge works on 600 m2. 5 Metre-high glass illuminates the base of this major volume located in the heart of the building. Its depths still harbor a modular black room of 400 m2et a 144 seat auditorium. In total, the construction develops spend m2répartis between public spaces and space logistics. Not without malice, this book reinforced concrete of ordinary invoice disappears under a broad extended cap for which the Japanese architect says inspired "braided the Chinese peasant straw hat!"

FishNet glulam

This strange soft hat is transcribed in the remarkable form of a membrane of glulam superimposing beams crossed 6 plans to set a hexagonal mesh. Describing curves and counfercurves, this cap down vertiginous dives on a few posts tulipés ground. Manufactured in Germany, it is covered with a membrane PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) on place and stowed on the metal rings that cerclent the protruding bays of galleries shaped to the Japan. This renovation which is ventilated heat protection covers the area of the forum at the entrance of the building, in the spirit of the piazza of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, fortunately protecting it from the weather. Still in a blink of an eye to parent, traffic in the metal structure Tower knocking the roof of a tubular boom at 37mètres. The cost of the work and studies amounted to EUR 60 million and the estimated operating budget is estimated at EUR 10 million per year.