Brownfields + Cultural

The Furnace

Le Fourneau - Brest 29

National Centre for Street Arts and Public Space - CNAREP

Development of the Ateliers des Capucins site for Street Arts

Project management	City of Brest
Surface	3 600 m2
Cost	6 300 000 € HT
Project management	Agent Architect: Caractére spécial
	Associate Architect: Kraft Architects
	BET TCE: Sobretec
	Acoustics: Marshall day
	Scenographer: Change on sight
Mission	Competition
Date	2018
Photographic Credits	MANQUILLET, Sébastien NORMAND
Images	El Atelier

Building just

What is to be done about the evocative power of such a building?
How can we transcribe the emotion felt and transmit it without damaging it when we first enter it?

Should we show him what kind of wood we're made of, stand up to him, be clever, work on a personal expression of which he will be the showcase, or rather try to act as if nothing had happened, as if what we add had been there for a long time, in the service of the building and the people who live in it and make it
live?

What do we need to show, where can we lean on?

The auditorium is obviously the highlight of this project. It is here that the combination of the artists' orchestrated wanderings and the immensity of the furnace walls will enter into resonance and harmony to reveal their majesty and truth.

There's every reason to keep quiet here to do a silent project. Our project is beautiful, it goes without saying, besides beauty is not said, but it speaks in a low voice as if to respect the place that shelters it, as if to be discreet in front of the show that is taking place. He speaks in a low voice as if to better penetrate gently the souls of the spectators or passers-by.

It is beautiful because we don't look for beauty in form or image but in the materials that we have chosen as the most conducive to make the whole place beautiful.

It is beautiful because one understands how it is constituted and its construction is in relation to the scale of the place. Continuing the passages, prolonging the views, keeping the heights, seeing the walls, there is an almost uterine carnal relationship to work inside a wasteland. Whoever is
not sensitive to this does not know what loving means. He has forgotten the eroticism of his life.

The guideline of our project is nothing more than to perpetuate the pleasure and the emotion that this kind of place provokes.

Our only opportunity to offer beauty is not to seek it but to do everything possible to meet it and make it blossom.

This is what can make this job magical, we sometimes achieve by assembling solids to become an alchemy of emotions. A stone in a landscape remains a stone, a stone used by a man can become a nugget.

There is nothing sensational about this project but if it is successful, it will be a sensation box ....