Glass blowing and cultural center of Meisenthal

Three independent yet interrelated institutions: the glass museum (Musée du Verre et du cristal) – a living memory tracing the history of glass at the site; the CIAV (Centre International d’Art Verrier) – an international glass art center where traditional craftsmanship meets contemporary practices; and the Cadhame (Halle verrière) – a multidisciplinary cultural space hosting art installations, happenings and concerts are sited at varying floor levels. Our intervention unifies them to define a contemporary institutional identity in dialogue with an industrial heritage.

An undulating poured-in-place concrete surface alludes to glass production as it unites the buildings. The surface functions as roof, ceiling, and wall, connecting the buildings’ ground floors to frame a public plaza. New functions are sensitively introduced under and over this surface, including offices, workshop areas, a cafe and restaurant. Existing building functions are reimaged and extended: the factory hall is given a new entrance on a previously unused basement floor and a 500-seat black box theater that can be reconfigured as a theater with standing room for 700 or opened into a concert hall for 3,000. The new public space heightens civic awareness of the historical site and also introduces a highly flexible venue for outdoor theater, concerts, and seasonal festivities.

The minimal and discreet architectural input aimed to simplify and unify the different programs and avoid any aesthetic fight with the pre-existing context. Bricks and stones, already very present on site, enter in a dialogue with a much more contemporary and yet minimalistic aesthetic of the undulating concrete veil and new buildings. To emphasize their different uses, the concrete has different finishes : precast, rammed, bush-hammered, sandblasted... These characteristics formed the choice of materials, a robust building that embeds itself within the layers of time present on-site over decades, if not centuries.