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architecture

Place de l’Océan

Steven Holl Architects’ Cité de l’Océan et du Surf, which opened early this summer in Biarritz, is a building responsive to its coastal seascapes. Abitare went to the

opening.

 posted byabitare

 photos by Iwan Baan

 

This is water

The Cité de l’Océan et du Surf, which opened this June, is the outcome of a competition held in 2005 where contenders included EMBT, Brochet Lajus Pueyo,

Bernard Tschumi and Jean-Michel Willmotte as well as the winner, Steven Holl Architects. The crowds who came to Biarritz on opening day seem to have taken

 possession of the building throughout its entire extent and on all levels, vividly demonstrating its natural vocation as a piece of landscape, an observatory, a place to

gather and meet people, a focus for sport and play, in addition to its official role as a museum and research centre. The Cité is a leisure machine both attuned and

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responsive to Biarritz’s rugged, windy beaches. The reinforced concrete of its white walls was mixed with aggregate from the South of France. The prefiguration of 

human movement in space in various types of circulation is a recurring feature of Holl’s architecture, along with conceptual slogans. Here, in this case, “under the sky,

under the sea”, a motto that encapsulates typographical features of the site and what it evokes, as well as, obviously, what the building is supposed to do. All the

indoor functions – the exhibition area occupying almost the entire base of the building, the auditorium, the admin offices – are located under the concave surface of the

Place de l’Océan, which rears up to the north and south to make room for the main façades. From its variety of hybrid materials – the Portuguese cobbles will

gradually be overrun by natural vegetation – there emerge two frosted glass parallelepipeds housing the cafeteria-restaurant and a surfers’ kiosk. These two artificial

 boulders are intentionally “analogous” in size and relative positioning to two cliffs rising from the section of sea most visible from the Cité. Excavated rather than

extruded into the concave surface of the Place de l’Océan, the bag-like skate pool, unexpectedly smooth-looking in its rough cobbled surround, sags into the porch below, lowering its ceiling. (anna foppiano)

 

In the Abitare issue just appeared in the newsstand you find the nice reportage by Federico Nicolao, who was at the inauguration on our behalf, and

an in depth-article by Paola Nicolin about the Solange Fabião’s intervention in the Steven Holl’s architecture.

 

Steven Holl

Founded in 1976 by Steven Holl (USA, 1947), it has offices in New York and Beijing. It has designed numerous art museum buildings (starting with the Kiasma,

Helsinki, 1992-1998) and both private and public residences (Simmons Hall, MIT, Cambridge, 1999-2002). Work in progress includes projects for the Glasgow

School of Art, the University of Iowa Arts Building and the Princeton University Center of Creative and Performing Arts. The Nanjing Museum of Art and

Architecture is scheduled to open this October.

www.stevenholl.com

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Solange Fabião

(Brazil, 1963). Artist and architect, lives and works in New York. Her projects include the “Transitio” sequence (Global Public Art Projects), Mexico City (2002),

 NYC-Tornio (2003), Beirut (2004), NYC (2005), Miami (2006); the “Amazônia” (Projecting on Black) video series, 2008; and the “Elementar no. 1 – Path to

Henry Hudson” installation, Woodstock, NY, 2009.

www.solangefabiao.com

 

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