Le Temps Machine / Moussafir Architectes Associés

Architects: Moussafir Architectes Associés
Location: Joue-Les-tours, France
Design Team: Jacques Moussafir with nicolas Hugoo, Alexis duquennoy, narumi Kang, sofie reynaert, Jérôme Hervé and Virginie Prie
Area: 1,753 sqm
Year: 2011
Photographs: Hervé Abbadie, Jérôme Ricolleau, Benoît Faure, Luc Boegly

Partner Engineers: A&T(stage designers), Ayda(acoustic designers), Batiserf(structural engineers), LBe (mechanical engineers), Bureau Michel Forgue(quantity surveyor)
Contractors: DV construction(general contractor), AMG Féchoz(stage machinery), Bideau(stage electrics), VTI(wooden stage flooring), Edmond Petit(stage fabrics)

Ideas & Objectives
The former Joué-lès-tours youth center was a blocky, opaque, inward-looking building that failed to interact with the surrounding public space and no longer met current standards and requirements.

The architectural design for the new music facility responds to a three-fold objective:
-To open the building up to its surroundings
-To improve the way the opaque block integrates with existing buildings
-To emphasize the festive dimension of the facility by making a unique architectural statement.

Composition & Experimentation
to improve its contextual integration, we have divided the structure into two parts functioning in different registers: a determinedly horizontal 2m50 tall concrete and glass base housing a fluid, open interior space, and a roof with the three main components of the design brief (the two performance areas and the resource center) bursting through it like opaque excrescences.

This duality is emphasized by the use of contrasting materials: hard on the inside (raw concrete, glass, stainless steel) and soft on the outside (a membrane stretched over exterior insulation materials).

Volume & Sensation
With its complex volumetrics and textured outer surface, the new building stands out like a beacon in the urban landscape. the contradictory image we were aiming at is one of a unique yet familiar object that is challenging
and yet invites appropriation: a sculptural design that refers to nothing that already exists, but which users can easily engage with, both in functional and symbolic terms.