Museum of the Great War by Christophe Lab

The newly inagurated Musée de la Grande Guerre in Pays de Meaux centres around the two Battles of the Marne in 1914 and 1918, and is located at the foot of the American Monument. Setting the museum on such a site and ensuring its harmony with the surrounding landscape was the challenge taken up by French architect Christophe Lab, who has succeeded in creating an edifice devoted to history in constant dialogue with one of the area's most emblematic memorial sites.

Lab's architecture is set on a fully landscaped 16-hectare site, planted with a cedar wood that visitors cross on their way into the museum. The cantilevered building thrusts forward, rising clear of the ground it stands on to create a pedestrian link with the American Monument, whose surrounding garden is extended southwards in the form of a terrace-belvedere-balcony, crossed by the wooded way leading up to the museum entrance. At the crossing of these two intertwined paths stands a building that either reveals itself or keeps itself hidden from view depending on the angle of approach—the museum, visible from the south and almost invisible from the north. The site continues on upwards across the building/bridge, without interrupting the flow of pedestrians.

The building asserts itself by the power of its overall shape, which, to the architect who designed it, signifies the force that compelled everything, humanity and landscape alike, throwing geography into disarray. The fragments of landscape that rise up and intermingle are a figurative reference to the churned-up ground of a tortured battlefield, a reference designed to stir the visitor's imagination: first of all a wood—a reference to "the archaic"—then the visit to the museum—"the war"—and finally the visit becomes a calming walk to the garden around the American Monument—"quietude, and an enlightened view of the greater landscape".

The museum's slender build—in counterpoint to the American Monument without in any way overshadowing it—gives it a dynamic presence that seems to melt away when the visitor is on foot and looking towards the city, appearing as nothing more than a belvedere. When visitors venture up the Varreddes road, however, the museum reveals itself in full for all to see, along with the enigmatic additions required by its museography, such as the outcrops in the roofing designed to contain aircraft, underpinned features as the trench ditch, or the extrusion of a tank. Such features, different in their geometry from the "museum block", introduce contradictions, bringing further richness to interpretation of the overall structure.

A roofed square formed by the building's underbelly leads to the museum entrance. A transition from exterior to interior, this covered area is equipped for projection of images on its flooring. It also enables visitors to catch glimpses of parts of the collection through windows ("display skylights") in the spaces underpinned by the building. Luminous patios punctuate the path, lighting the way from the covered square to the entrance hall. Visitors are immediately immersed in the scenography, through partly visible features of the museography awaiting them on the upper floor.

The floor of the square is an immense relief map of the North-East of France, and can act as a ground for large-scale projections depicting troop movements and variations in the front line during the 1914 and 1918 Battles of the Marne. Leaving the square, visitors are directed to a luminous glassed reception hall containing the cafe and auditorium entrance. A huge ramp then takes them to the upper level of the hall. The ascent takes them past the shop to the ticket office, and finally to the exhibition itself.

The new museum covers a total of 7000 m2: 3000 m2 devoted to the permanent exhibition, 300 m2 for temporary exhibitions, 2 rooms for school groups and discovery workshops, a 115-seat auditorium, a documentation centre containing over 8000 works, a café and a bookshop/gift shop. Construction has been careful to take environmental aspects into full consideration (clean worksite, recovery of rainwater, effective insulation, etc.) and meets all the needs of a great 21st-century museum.

Christophe Lab was awarded the 1991 "Albums de la Jeune Architecture", and published Ready-Made Urbains (Editions Picard), with a preface by Paul Virilio in 2000. The same year, he teamed up with Cécile Courtey to build his agency and home in Paris' 19th Arrondissement. Atelier Lab has been responsible for a wide variety of projects: water towers (Burie), schools (ENSCI, Nazelles), hospital departments (Dole), and such technical projects as the helistation with terraced refuelling at Dreux General Hospital (the first of its kind in France), footbridges (over the Oise in Guise) and the redevelopment of the Amiens Nord Business Park. It has also carried out such small-scale emblematic projects as Maison Alpha in Nanterre, Maison Caravane in rue de l'Ermitage, Paris, and Maison-Film, also in Paris.