The highlight of this building is the seemingly soft mattress-like sculpturesque volumes protruding from its roof. The architects have revamped an existing building by making a unique architectural statement.

©Fred Beaubeau

‘The former Joué-lès-Tours youth centre was a blocky, opaque, inward-looking building that failed to interact with the surrounding public space and no longer met current standards and requirements. The architectural design for the new music facility responds to a three-fold objective: to open the building up to its surroundings, to improve the way the opaque block integrates with existing buildings, and emphasise the festive dimension of the facility by making a unique architectural statement. We chose to situate the new building where the old one stood, and to reinterpret some of the latter’s salient features (such as its prow-shaped auditorium) while offering the space a radically new image by opening it up to its context. With its generously glazed street-side entrance, the building’s exterior features deep projecting eaves and a strongly cantilevered auditorium providing both an impression of lightness and a sense of hospitality vis-a-vis the public space and dwellings nearby. To improve its contextual integration, we have divided the structure into two parts functioning in different registers: a determinedly horizontal 2m50 tall concrete and glass base housing a fluid, open interior space, and a roof with the three main components of the design brief (the two performance areas and the resource centre) bursting through it like opaque excrescences. This duality is emphasised by the use of contrasting materials: hard on the outside (raw concrete, glass, stainless steel) and soft on the inside (membrane stretched over exterior insulation materials). With its complex volumetric and textured outer surface, the new building stands out like a beacon in the urban landscape. The contradictory image we were aiming at is one of a unique yet familiar object that is challenging and yet invites appropriation: a sculptural design that refers to nothing that already exists, but which users can easily engage with, both in functional and symbolic terms.’

ARCHITECTS: Jacques Moussafir with Nicolas Hugoo, Alexis Duquennoy, Narumi Kang, Sofie Reynaert, Jérôme Hervé and Virginie Prié, Paris, France. CLIENT: TOUR(S) PLUS (Tours City Council). LOCATION: 49, rue des Martyrs, 37300 Joue-les-Tours, France. DESCRIPTION: Concert facility to replace the existing youth centre, including a concert space for a standing audience of 650, a 150-seat cabaret-style space, a resources centre, and 3 rehearsal studios with service areas. STATUS: completed. AREA: 1,753 sqm. PARTNER ENGINEERS: A&T (stage designers), Ayda (acoustic designers), Batiserf (structural engineers), LBE (mechanical engineers), Bureau Michel Forgue (quantity surveyor). CONTRACTORS: DV Construction (general contractor), AMG Féchoz (stage machinery), Bideau (stage electrics), VTI (wooden stage flooring), Edmond Petit (stage fabrics). MATERIALS: Colour washed raw concrete, solvent- and plastics-free FPO roofing membrane by Sika Sarnafil, glazed stainless steel, Fibracoustic panels of wood fibre and rockwool, door/window frames aluminium (exterior), steel and wood (interior). . No part of this web site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Morfae and the copyright owner.