Corinne Vezzoni et Associés: Mucem CCR

In Marseille, Corinne Vezzoni and AURA completed their winning project for the Mucem Conservation and Resource Centre (CCR), echoing the neighbouring industrial masses and artillery barracks.

The Centre de Conservation et de Ressources du Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, a place intended for the storage and study of the collections, occupies a plot of around 13,000 sqm on 1.2 hectares of formerly military land, the Bugeaud site of the Muy barracks, in the La belle de mai district, a plot large enough for subsequent extension in a second phase.

It houses all of the museum’s reserves as well as it’s documentary collections, its library and its scientific archives. The Mucem CCR carries out the museum’s primary functions, i.e. the storage, preservation, study, archiving, maintenance and development of the collections.

The centre is also intended to become a lively place, a tool for the enhancement and dissemination of the collections through an active policy of loans and deposits.

The La belle de mai district, characterised by the presence of brownfield sites, already hosts the City’s municipal archives, La friche de la belle de mai and the Media Centre with its studios.

The Conservation Centre is the last of the amenities in this district, focused on cultural development and particularly accessible because of its proximity to the station.

In installing the Mucem conservation building in a radical and compact way on the site, Corinne Vezzoni shows the maximum dimensions as an echo of the neighbouring industrial masses and the base of the artillery barracks.

Its simple volume, easily identifiable even in a fleeting glimpse from a passing train, is designed to make it an urban signal but also an echo for the Civilisations Museum.

Employing exactly the same footprint as the Civilisations Museum (72 x 72 m), through a kind of sly reference, the architect has built a great monolith of rough concrete, like solid a piece of sculpted rock, to allow natural light to penetrate. The reference to the work of the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida is explicit. The coloured, poured concrete solid shell is thus cast and hollowed so that the brightness of a smooth and reflective white concrete emerges from the thickness of the building.

Streetside, the building echoes the industrial scale of its surroundings, and maintains the alignments.

Passers-by see a wall of raw concrete, ochre in colour, but this apparent opacity contrasts with the interior, which is organised around sunlit, south facing patios.

An inner world takes its place in these hollows. The offices and temporary exhibition space are protected from the noises of the city, enjoying a peaceful atmosphere emanating from the heart of the site. The lines of trees have been retained and can be glimpsed from the street, above the former sheds. Pedestrian access is via the original square.

Essentially housing reserves, the building is by definition turned on itself, unlike the Mucem building which represents the visible side of the institution.

For the architect, “reserves are the underside of the décor; the place of secrets”.

The roof, clad with large slabs of coloured concrete add to the monolithic image, and provide the view of a fifth facade from the Le Muy barracks and the railway line. In addition, two existing buildings have been retained and refurbished on the edge of the site: a warehouse on the street to house collections in transit and hut accommodation for foreign researchers.