Louvre-Lens

Architects: Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa
Text: Edit Pálinkás
Photos: Iwan Baan, Hisao Suzuki

In 2003 the French minister of Culture published a contest to house the newly established Louvre museum in the regions of France. It was only the youngest region, Nord-Pas Calais which submitted applications, simultaneously for five cities of which Lens, the former mining centre was selected. For the 2005 tender for the museum building more than 120 designs were submitted. SANAA’s winning design is a single-storey complex: filtered with light and clad in glass, it harmoniously blends with its environment, whilst sensitively responding to its heavily laden past. Architects concieved a low-rise easy-access and transparent structure, which adjusts to its context without dominating it. The 360-metre long museum building consists of five volumes, a quadratic central hall flanked by a smaller and larger gallery from two sides, which are reminiscent of the Louvre wings. Roofs are partly glazed, the ceiling is ribbed with perforated aluminium sheets that finely reflect natural light: this allows the interior of the museum to follow the changes of the seasons and daytimes.

Architects: Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa – SANAA
Gallery design: Imrey Culbert
Landscape: Mosbach Paysagistes
Structure: Betom Ingénierie
Energy and comfort concept: Transplan
Environmental design: Hubert Penicaud
Facade engineering: Bollinger & Grohmann
Artificial and natural daylighting: Arup