Brownfields + Cultural

The Big T

LE GRAND T - Nantes (44)

Restructuring of the Grand T theatre and hosting of the Loire-Atlantique Music and Dance Association

Project management	Department of Loire-Atlantique
Surface	7 975 m2
Cost	18 718 000 €
Project management	Lead architect: Caractère Spécial
	Associate architect: Projectiles
	Scenography : Change on sight
	Landscape : Atelier Roberta
	Acoustics: Marshall Day
	BE TCE : AIA
Mission	Complete | in progress

"We were not aware of these wishes at the time of filing and yet it is quite precisely as if we had read their minds.

The theatre was the marker of societies, it testified to the technological and societal advances of the world to which it belonged, and then as culture became the very poor relation of the modern world, the theatre was replaced by stadiums and the actors by decerebrate beings with strange hair patterns, disgusting tattoos and clothes that exceeded all thresholds of vulgarity.

The planet is overheating and the world is evolving at full speed with consequences that no one can predict.
It becomes more necessary than ever to believe that tomorrow exists and to create places of possibilities that everyone will be able to imagine and make live in all freedom.
The big T is a theater which depends on the departmental council, a community which was invented during the revolution.
This new big T is thus a soft revolutionary emanation this time.
Here, the trees are immense and magnificent. They are the benevolent sentinels of the place.
Their shadows are protective and guard the secrets.
In Africa, there are infinite and shapeless megalopolises that spread like organic elements. They give the way to what the city will be tomorrow. There are also villages in Africa, in the center of the village, there is always a tree, under this tree there is shade and people talking to each other.
The tree is always in the center of what becomes the village square; the meeting place.
It will be the same here.
The trees will be the guardian angels that will allow people to meet, to talk to each other, and they will make circulate in their sap all the secrets that we will want to entrust to them."

Matthieu Poitevin