Paris 8 University Arts Department (with Bernard Dufournet)

Saint-Denis, France

Photo © Georges Fessy

Photo © Mario Palmieri

Photo © Georges Fessy

Picture © Claire Petetin

Photo © Mario Palmieri

Photo © Mario Palmieri and Georges Fessy

Photo © Georges Fessy

Architects: Moussafir Architectes

Location: 2, rue de la Liberté, 93200 Saint-Denis, France
Year: 2000

Geometry and light transform a set of confined spaces into an ensemble of rooms, creating countless variables to replace the sense of enclosure. The existing condition was a series of disjointed, randomly positioned rooms set within a mass of structural elements, circulation spaces, storage areas, and service ducts. The disorienting layout caused a feeling of separation from the overall context. The renovation project aimed to stimulate the mechanisms of memory by suggesting a mental space underpinned by the user’s recollection of already familiar areas; a space where borders between illusion and reality would be blurred, combining transparency and reflection, the real and the virtual. Passageways and windows form a sequence of colorful trapezoidal volumes around which white, rectangular rooms are articulated. Overlooking inaccessible vistas, huge windows alternately show the absence or the presence of things, according to the angle of vision – an environment that responds to the process of teaching art, focused on ways of seeing things rather than on the things themselves. The varying depths of brightly colored window openings set obliquely into the walls cast a veil of ambiguity, producing a sense of «radiant serenity» within a necessarily finite space.