Description

In addition to the requirements that the important collection of paintings and sculptures of the fifteenth to the twentieth century be presented chronologically and that a department of antiques be accommodated, the architects also had to take into account the tower of a mediaeval fortress and on top of that, had to include a sports facility and an underground garage. They made use of this last requirement to raise the building, clad in white stone on the main show side above the street level, by means of an embankment covered with vegetation. A wide, gently rising stairway leads at that corner of the building that faces the city centre to the level of the museum, whose 65 gallery rooms are for the most part on one level.

From the exterior, the museum – whose ground plan is composed of one square and two circular segments – appears as a flat, largely closed volume that is gently rounded on the northern side facing the River Isère and on the entrance side, is arranged as five blocks separated from each other by narrow light slits. These vertical wall openings that continue over glazed saddleback roofs into the interior of the building as space-forming tracks of light, not only contrast with the horizontals of the rhythmically drawn masonry, but also allow views into the interior of the building, thus recognisable as a museum.

It is accessed from the round atrium derived from classical modernism. To the right of it, one can gain access to the antique department housed in the basement, while to the left, one can get to the cafeteria. Above all, though, one will be lead into the museum ‘street’ brightly lit from above. As the central orientation axis, it connects the museum’s three main departments: to the left, the rooms for the permanent collection, lit by means of rooflights through double metal reflectors with subdued light from above but on the perimeters also lit from the side; to the right of this passage, the rooms for temporary exhibitions, and, at its end, the rooms for modern art lit with northern light via sawtooth roofs. This way a double circular tour through the museum is achieved allowing visitors to be as leisurely as they wish or to reach every room without going a step out of their way.

Techniques et Architecture 387/1990, pp. 98-101 • Räume für Kunst, exhibition catalogue, Graz, 1993, pp. 30-31 • Techniques et Architecture 408/1993, pp. 24-32 • France musées récents (le moniteur architecture amc), Paris, 1999, pp. 90-95 • Frank Maier-Solgk, Die neuen Museen, Cologne, 2002, pp. 118-123

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Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.