French studios Caractère Spécial and Parisian studio NP2F Architectes have expanded the home of a circus arts centre in France’s Champagne region and added a curving outdoor staircase .
Photograph by Sebastien Normand
The Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) has been located on a 19th-century circus web site in Châlons-en-Champagne, north-east France, because 1985.
Marseille firm Caractère Spécial and Parisian studio NP2F Architectes won a competition run by the Ministry for Culture and Communications to overhaul the facility and expand it into adjacent agricultural premises.
Photograph by Sebastien Normand
The 20,000-square-metre internet site and warehouse buildings of La Marnaise Agricultural Cooperative have been purchased by the French government in 2006 following worries more than the proximity of its grain silos to a active street.
Photograph by Sebastien Normand
The architects retained the current structures, generating open regions for the fairground pursuits and additional a new college and accommodation developing to merge the CNAC’s existing site with the new.
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These buildings have a concrete frame and are covered in panels of grey corrugated fibre cement by manufacturer Eternit – matching the replaced cladding of the authentic structures.
Photograph by Sebastien Normand
“In buy to affirm their presence and their part inside of the town, the school constructing and housing are fitted into previously empty spaces,” explained the architects.
“The place and layout of these volumes kinds an extension of the existing buildings, recreating a facade along the website, aligned with the northern hangar.”
Photograph by Christophe Manquillet
“Rather than defining itself in opposition to the existing buildings, the venture extends them, echoing their components and forms,” they additional. “Eternit was picked to restore the track record of a low-cost materials.”
Photograph by Christophe Manquillet
The new college constructing slots in between a silo and a hangar at the northern finish of the web site, while a 13-room pupil housing complicated sits in one particular the corner of the plot exactly where two roads meet.
Photograph by Christophe Manquillet
Classrooms for dance, theatre and music lessons, as well as a sauna and dressing locations are found in the school constructing.
A staircase curves out of the cement cladding on the third floor of this developing, ahead of rejoining a balcony on the floor beneath.
Photograph by Christophe Manquillet
Illuminated signage by graphic designer Malte Martin reading “What a Circus?” is affixed to the gable of 1 area of the complex.
Circus apparatus which includes a trampoline, pole and sponge-filled crash pit fill the concrete-framed room within.
Project credits:
Venture proprietor: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
Delegate project owner: Opérateur du Patrimoine et des Projets Immobiliers de la Culture (OPPIC)
Architects: Caractère Spécial, Matthieu Poitevin Architecture, NP2F Architectes
Undertaking managers: Marc Kauffmann, Nicolas Guérin
Structural engineering: DVVD
Fluids/EQ engineering: Elithis
Development economics: VPEAS Lighting design and style: Lumières studio Scenography: Ducks sceno Acoustics: Orfea
Landscaping: Base
Site diagram 
Web site program 
Ground floor program 
Part one particular 
Area two
