House of Arts

The project The Maison des Arts brings together several different functions - theater, music, sculpture, cinema, and radio broadcasting. It is a long, narrow, and very simple box horizontally cut in half and pierced by two large vertical shafts. Simple connections: “a machine with emotions,” a box full of ideas, a container of representations. The starting point in the design was to eliminate as much of the complicated internal structure as possible and create a “simple object,” a container with “sensitive skin” - the copper skin has already oxidized slightly and gained a wonderful greenish patina recording the passage of time. In some places, the shell reveals itself so that the house can show its interior. The wooden box of the radio studio on the roof rises like an antenna, emphasizing that communication with the world is possibly the only way to release emotions and senses from the depths of the soul. To the south, Fuksas planned an extension of the theater with adjoining rehearsal rooms and service areas, which is completely autonomous and can be used for all kinds of artistic entertainment.