MÉCA by BIG and FREAKS freearchitects

Amy Frearson | 20 June 2012 6 comments

Danish architects BIG and French studio FREAKS freearchitects have designed a cultural centre for Bordeaux with a huge stage in its middle.

Named MÉCA, which is an acronym for Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, the centre will provide a combined new home for visual arts organisation FRAC, performing arts centre the OARA and literature/movie organisation the ECLA.

The surrounding riverfront landscape will ramp up through the building's rectangular central hollow to provide a public square for outdoor exhibitions and events that is directly above the ground floor lobbies.

Both the building and the surrounding waterside promenade will be clad in limestone, matching most of the city's historical architecture.

BIG have also recently designed a skyscraper shaped like a hash symbol, while earlier this year FREAKS freearchitects stuck huge dimension arrows onto a well-known building in Paris.

See all our stories about BIG here and see all our stories about FREAKS freearchitects here.

Here's some information from BIG:

BIG DESIGNS A MÉCA TO CULTURE IN BORDEAUX, FRANCE

Team BIG+FREAKS freearchitects, dUCKS scéno, Khephren Ingénierie, VPEAS, ALTO Ingénierie, Vincent Hedont, PBNL, Mryk & Moriceau, Ph.A wins the competition to design a new 12 000 m2 cultural center on the riverfront of Bordeaux, merging three cultural institutions into one single building.

The new Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, MÉCA, located on the historical riverfront of Bordeaux will house three regional visual and performing arts agencies FRAC, the ECLA and the OARA in one single institution.

The Regional Council of Bordeaux selected the winning team among proposals from SANAA, the Toulouse-based firm W-Architectures and Bordeaux-based FLINT.

BIG’s proposal arranges the new center for contemporary art, the performing arts institution and the center for literature and movies around a public space open towards the city of Bordeaux and the Garonne River.

The building is conceived as a single loop of public space and cultural institutions as the pavement of the promenade rises to form the roof of the main lobbies, ascends vertically along the stage tower of OARA, bridges across the promenade with the sky lit galleries of the FRAC and returns vertically to the ground at the archives of the ECLA in order to reunite with the waterfront promenade.

“When a region or a city invests millions in a major new cultural institution - it often ends up benefiting only the informed few that already have an interest in the arts.

Not only does the MÉCA spill its activities into the public realm and the urban room, but the public is also invited to walk around, through, above and below the new cultural gateway.

By inviting the art into the city and the city into the arts, the MÉCA will provide opportunities for new hybrids of cultural and social life beyond the specific definitions of its constituent parts.” Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.