Site Verrier de Meisenthal
FREAKS freearchitects SO-IL- Type Museum Culture / Leisure Refurbishment
- Material Concrete
- Date 2022
- City Meisenthal
- Country France
- Photographer Iwan Baan
The Northern Vosges Regional Natural Park encompasses about a hundred French municipalities and one is Meisenthal, also known for its glassworks. The outcome of a 2015 competition, the project carried out by the New York firm SO-IL and the Paris studio FREAKS involved renovating an 18th-century glass factory, home to the Musée du Verre et du cristal since 1978 and the Centre International d’Art Verrier since 1992. The complex was expanded with a cultural center providing a venue for exhibitions, events, and concerts. Engaging in dialogue with the industrial heritage of the place, an undulating element built with concrete holds the premises together while framing a square and rising off the ground to create terraces. The existing buildings are all listed as heritage sites to protect, so the intervention was kept minimal, adding concrete volumes that strike a contrast with the old bricks, sich as the two office blocks with two-pitched roofs that embrace one of the former factory’s chimneys.