Le Temps Machine, a former youth center, is being transformed by Jacques Moussafir Architects in a new design concert venue in Joue-les-Tours (2 h from Paris). Let’s visit this contemporary and innovative cultural project !
By this project, Jacques Moussafir Architects innovates and shows his complete way of thinking architecture combining the past and the future…
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.
