Paris architects Lacaton & Vassal have reinvented as a modern, lightweight "doppelgänger", a translucent structure to house an international art collection, in Dunkirkʼs harbour. Established during Mitterrand’s presidency in the early 1980s, les Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain (Frac) is a network of cultural institutions tasked with the assembly and dissemination of a collection of contemporary art across the French regions. Between them the 23 Fracs have acquired more than 25,000 works which they loan to museums, public buildings and even schools within their respective territories.

On the one hand, the British side of the Channel, Dunkirk is associated with Operation Dynamo, the 1940 evacuation of 340,000 Allied troops with the assistance of a now legendary civilian flotilla. However, in France the town was long synonymous with shipbuilding, after the founding there in 1898 of the Ateliers et Chantiers de France (ACF), which for almost a century built first liners and warships, then oil tankers and car ferries, until their closure in 1988.

Lacaton & Vassal took one look at the AP2 and concluded that its magnificent interior volume, reminiscent, as they pointed out, of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, ‘was so strong from an architectural point of view, and aesthetically so overwhelmingly beautiful, that we didn’t want to fill it’. Consequently, instead of trying to cram the FRAC’s programme into the AP2, they proposed constructing a new, adjacent edifice which, thanks to the use of commercially available prefabricated materials, could be tailor-made just so while remaining on budget, leaving the AP2 as ‘unprogrammed’ space that could be used for monumental temporary exhibitions, or loaned to the municipality for cultural events.

The new structure would be a mirror image of the adjoining former shipbuilding workshop AP2, reproducing its exact dimensions and silhouette, with an outer envelope comprising a metal-framed, plastic-clad greenhouse under which would shelter a trabeated concrete-framed structure containing the reserves at one end and gallery and administrative space at the other − in other words, the winter-gardens system Lacaton & Vassal had used at the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre to provide extra space and bioclimatic insulation would here be expanded from a micro to a macro scale as in a Buckminster Fuller protective dome.
 

Memory of project

The FRAC houses regionally assembled public collections of contemporary art. These collections are conserved, archived and presented to the public through on site exhibitions and by loans to both galleries and museums.

The North region FRAC is located on the site of Dunkerque port in an old boat warehouse called Halle AP2. The halle AP2 is a singular and symbolic object. Its internal volume is immense, bright, impressive. Its potential for uses is exceptional.

To implant the FRAC, as a catalyst for the new area, and also to keep the halle in its entirety becomes the basic idea of our project.

To achieve this concept, the project creates a double of the halle, of the same dimension, attached to the existing building, on the side wihich faces the sea, and which contains the program of the FRAC. The new building juxtaposes delicately without competing nor fading. The duplication is the attentavie response to the identity of the halle; Under a light and bioclimatic envelope, a prefabricated and efficient structure determines free, flexible and evolutionary platforms, with few constraints, fit to the needs of the program.

The transparency of the skin allows to see the background vision of the opaque volume of the artworks reserves.

The public footbridge (previously planned along the facade) which crosses the building becomes a covered street entering the halle and the internal facade of the FRAC. The halle AP2 will remain a completely available space, which can work either with the FRAC, in extension of its activities, (exceptional temporary exhibitions, creation of large scale works, particular handlings) or independently to welcome public events (concert, fairs, shows, circus, sport) and which enriches the possibilities of the area. The functioning of each of the buildings is separated, or combined.

The architecture of the halle and its current quality make sufficient minimal, targeted and limited interventions. Thanks to the optimization of the project, the budget allows the realisation of the FRAC and the setting up of conditions and equipment for public use of the halle AP2.

The project so creates an ambitious public resource, of flexible capacity, which allows work at several scales from everyday exhibitions to large-scale artistic events, of regional but also european and international resonance, which consolidates the redevelopment of the port of dunkerque.

 

CREDITS.

Architects.- Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal, architects. Collaborators.- Florian de Pous, chief project, Camille Gravellier, Yuko Ohashi.

With Secotrap (structure, mechanical systems), CESMA (metal structure), Vincent Pourtau (cost), Vulcanéo (fire security consultant), Gui Jourdan (acoustic), Cardonnel (thermal studies).

Location.- Dunkerque, France.
Dates.- competition 2009, design 2010,completiion scheduled in 2012 - 2013.
Program.- Culture.
Status.- Built.
Area.- 11,129 m²: 9,157 m² new building and 1,972 m² existing hall.
Client.- Communauté Urbaine de Dunkerque.
Budget.- 12 M€ HT/net (2011).

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Lacaton & Vassal. Anne Lacaton and Jean Phillippe Vassal created the office in 1989, based in Paris. The office has a practice in France, as well as abroad, working on various buildings and urban planning programs.

Anne LACATON was born in France in 1955. She graduated from the School of architecture of Bordeaux in 1980, and got a diploma in Urban Planning at the university of Bordeaux in 1984. She is teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Madrid since 2007, and was invited in 2011 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, as well as in Harvard GSD Studio in Paris in 2011.

Jean Philippe VASSAL was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1954. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Bordeaux in 1980. He worked as an urban planner in Niger from 1980 to 1985. He is professor at UdK Berlin since 2012, and has been a visiting professor at the TU in Berlin in 2007-2010, and at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne in 2010-11.

Main Awards, the Grand Prix National d’Architecture, France, 2008, the Rolf Schock Prize, visual arts category, Sweden 2014, the Daylight & Building Components Award, Velum Fonden, Denmark, 2011, and the International Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2009, the Equerre d'Argent award 2011, with Frédéric Druot, France. Their work has been shortlisted several times and twice finalist for the Mies Van der Rohe Award, European Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

The main works completed by the office are: the FRAC, Public Contemporary Art Collection, in Dunkerque, France; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Site for contemporary creation ; social housing and student housing in Paris ; a music and polyvalent hall in Lille ; the Café for the Architektur Zentrum in Vienna ; a School for Business and Management in Bordeaux ; the Architecture school in Nantes, and significant housing projects in France such as the House Latapie, Bordeaux ; the House in the trees, facing Arcachon Bay, the "Cité Manifeste" in Mulhouse. They are now working on the transformation of modernist social housing : the Transformation of Tour Bois le Prêtre in Paris (with Frédéric Druot, architect), in St Nazaire la Chesnaie and in Bordeaux Grand Parc (with F Druot and Ch. Hutin, architects). All these projects are based on a principle of generosity and economy, serving the life, the uses and the appropriation, with the aim of changing the standard.

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Published on: January 16, 2014
Cite: "FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais by Lacaton & Vassal" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/frac-nord-pas-de-calais-lacaton-vassal> ISSN 1139-6415
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