Arising from the historic town fortifications, David Chipperfield Architects’ new Musée des Beaux-arts is situated on the periphery of a long green space in between the old and new parts of Reims, France. The Gallo-Roman gate and the modernist market hall, located in its vicinity, are evidence of Reims’s architectural history from antiquity to modern times. Clad with marble slabs and glass ceramic panels, the translucent Musée des Beaux-arts building shares a site with an excavation area filled with mediaeval findings.
Continue reading to learn more about the Musée des Beaux-arts.
The freestanding building is composed of three bar-formed volumes with monopitched roofs. The translucent façade is clad with marble slabs at the plinth zone and glass ceramic panels in the upper area. A twelve metre high, self-supporting hall opens up to the city on three sides and spans the excavation site. The hall provides a publicly accessible transition space between inside and outside. The light falling through the translucent marble gives the space a unique atmosphere. Suspended, wooden bridges bring together the different approach routes and lead across the archaeological findings into the foyer overlooking the excavation site.
Cloakrooms, a café and an auditorium lead off from the foyer. The art depot is located in the two basement floors, while the exhibition rooms – displaying paintings, sculptures and objects from the 15th to 21st century – progress upwards in chronological sequence. The longitudinal main rooms can be divided flexibly. Smaller galleries, devoted to different artists or collectors, branch off from the main rooms. In addition to the sequence of galleries there are art education rooms and spaces where visitors can relax, offering views over the town. A library, sculpture garden and glimpses into the non-public restoration workshops round off the museum experience.
A large proportion of the exhibition space is naturally lit. Light-diffusing ceilings in the uppermost floor distribute the daylight evenly through the pitched roofs. The large, translucent façade areas in the first two floors make it possible to control the incidence of side light, the preferred lighting for the exhibits on display, while individual windows draw the visitor’s attention providing views up to the cathedral.
Architect: David Chipperfield Architects
Location: Reims, France
Client: Ville de Reims
User: Musée des Beaux-arts Reims
Project Team: Alexander Schwarz (Design director), Harald Müller (Managing director), Annette Flohrschütz (Project architect), Maria Busch, Anton Hahn, Christian Helfrich, Cyril Kriwan, Dalia Liksaite, Franziska Rusch, Thomas Schöpf
Competition: September 2011 – January 2012
Project start: 2012
Gross floor area: 14,000 m2
Exhibition design: Element GmbH – design & scenography, Basel
Services engineer: Otelio, Colmar
Lighting consultant: 8‘/18“ – Concepteurs et Plasticiens lumière, Paris
Structural engineer: O.T.E. Ingénierie, Illkirch
Building physics: O.T.E. Ingénierie, Illkirch
Fire protection consultant: O.T.E. Ingénierie, Illkirch
Quantity surveyor: O.T.E. Ingénierie, Illkirch
Renderings: David Chipperfield Architects
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- South-west elevation, View from corner Rue de Mars / Rue Andrieux © David Chipperfield Architects
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- East elevation, View from Boulevard Lundy © David Chipperfield Architects
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- Main entrance © David Chipperfield Architects
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- View from the foyer into the excavation hall © David Chipperfield Architects
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- Modular exhibition space 20th, 21st century © David Chipperfield Architects
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- North-west elevation, View from corner Rue de Mars / Boulevard Lundy © David Chipperfield Architects
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Architecture is not entertainment, it isn’t defined by how fun it is. Most of the time, the fun in projects is a strategy for selling, but it hardly ever translates into a true interest in the feasibility and functionality of the project.
This project will look gorgeus and will still look great in 30 years. Seriously, some people need to go and visit all the “fun” and empty projects of past decades and see how ugly and dated they look, and how most of them are full of leaks, humidity stains and cracks due to a total lack of interest in nothing but impressing the jury and winning the competition. But no, why study the history, why check the images of competitions and compare them to the actual buildings after 10 years of use? It’s so much funner to look through the magazines and blogs and live in fantasy land.
Besides, this is a museum of beaux arts, the art should be the protagonist, and not the architecture.
Amazing project.
Great architecture is restrained, reduced, elegant and exquisitely detailed . It should avoid spectacle and self aggrandizement.
This tends slightly toward monumentalism, but that is preferable to the vulgarity of a trite formalistic gesture.
I love this project, it will be beautiful.
nice comment. i agree
I need to pick up my jaw from the floor, excuse me. This is… liberating
Godryk refers to that what is called ‚timelessness‘ in architecture, an aspect which in all periods of history is hardly understood by this grand majority of all those fashionable architects. It is something most important to create quality in design which stands the test of time. I always wonder why so many jury members
In architecture don’t understand that and award proposals which just absorb the ‘Zeitgeist’.
David Chipperfield is one of the few, and that makes him great, who incorporates the timeless component. His buildings will be accepted and admired in 25 years and longer. Architects like him are really ahead of their own ‘time’.
When are you going to stop this architectural porno reel and start putting up plans so we can interrogate. I love the project though :-)