area 103 | Paris

architect: Ateliers Jean Nouvel

location: Paris

Harmonies, accords…

The word philharmonic embodies the concept of “love for harmony”. We “play” a succession of urban harmonies. The philharmonic represents a prestigious element which maintains harmonious relationships with the Villette Park, the City of Music and the outer ring-road of Paris. One: harmony with the lights of Paris, with the sunrays breaking through gray clouds, with rain... An architecture with meditated, quiet reflections, created as a calm relief, materialized by aluminium panels which form a graphic pattern evoking Escher on the pavement. Two: harmony with the Villette park, continuity with the Tschumi’s themes, horizontal shelter-garden below the building, touches of eccentricity, shades reflected by the lustrous architecture, and creation of a small hill, a rise in the Villette district, a mineral elevation that one may walk across and that, just like the little hills of Chaumont, offers a vantage point for viewing the townscape. Three: harmony with the City of Music through the design of oblique surfaces and floor materials where the force lines are already indicated. Four: harmony with the outer ring-road and the city outskirts through the creation of a sign on the scale of a dynamic and distant view, a landmark in the night, a beacon marking the rise, programs… Today it is necessary to establish a new accord with music and with melomaniacs, who are running the risk of becoming lazy, tempted by the comfort of listening to stereos and CDs at home. The philharmonic is an open place. One: the hall and the foyer offer earthly pleasures, one may fix an appointment here, pass the time strolling in the boutiques, having something to drink or eat in the bars overlooking the park, reading in the salons. Two: the hall suggests immaterial tones of music and light, suspending the spectator-listener in the space of the ample galleries, with extremely comfortable, wide and deep armchairs. The suspension gives one an impression of being surrounded by music and immersed in light. The “volumetric cyclorama” shell is illuminated in different ways depending on the repertory, and some windows are opened from time to time, allowing glimpses of the park or the city outskirts. Three: it is a matter of increasing the prestige of the concert, as a unique experience which not only offers musical, but also visual and sensorial ecstasy, it is a matter of recreating that charm which one may find in the most prestigious philharmonics; among which that of Paris cannot be absent. The Parisian theatre vaunts a powerful yet calm aesthetic, characterized by the use of a single material, aluminium, with pearly shades, a delicacy which adds to the mystery of the hall, which gleams in the silvery-gray folds of the building.

 

location: Parc de La Villette, Paris
client: La Philharmonie de Paris
architect: Ateliers Jean Nouvel (Jean Nouvel & Michel Pélissié)
acoustic office: Marshall Day Acoustics Limited, Nagata Acoustics
associated architect: Brigitte Métra
project consultants: Olivier Boissière, Hubert Tonka
architects in chief: Eric Stephany (competition), Mathieu Forest (study) Xavier Hardouin (partner)
consultants: S. Cambrelain, A. Fleischer, F. Madlener, D. Marco, J. Markovitz, G. Pesson, A. Richard, M. Stropa, M. Veaute
budget: 200.000.000 euro
model: Jean Louis Courtois
model photo: Maquette Gaston & Seplet