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Vinci Conference Centre
Jean Nouvel | |
| location | Tours |
| function | congress centre |
| contributed by | bruno_vanbesien |
The architect's task in the contexts - LeClerc Place, Palissy Street, the prefecture garden, the train station - was to liberate the site from its residual nature. It was a balancing act between neighbouring conditions and their varying perspectives. It was also about resolving a contradiction between a monumental urban programme and a domestically-scaled site that asks rather for a non-entity, for something willingly absorbed by the two major presences of the surrounding urban space: the prefecture and the station. Nouvel's task was to avoid this situation, but also to use it to his advantage. Thus the new building is simultaneously a monument and a natural consequence of the site. Seen from the boulevard and the station, the centre is an arrowhead directed towards the park. From the covered place beneath the prow of the great, slightly-rounded roof, one can see and feel the centre's belly and its depth, with its 3 suspended halls clad in gunmetal grey (text from architect's website).
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