Artist’s Studio Mosquito Coast Factory
Gaston Tolila - Tolila+Gilliland Atelier d ’Architecture - France

About Gaston Tolia

In 2012, their work received the “Prix d’Architecture du Moniteur 2012 pour la première oeuvre”. (French National prize for the first built work). Today, the atelier develops a broad range of architecture programs (housing, public works, offices...) with a particular attention to integration of each project into its own historic, geographic and environmental context.

Projects

- 2003-06 Nomadic dispensary, South Africa
- 2005 Exhibition D-Day in Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
- 2006-08 Medical Training Center, Ipuli, Tanzania
- 2007 National Design Triennal, Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York USA
- 2010-12 Mosquito Coast Factory, artist studio, Campbon, France
- 2011 Restaurant Olivades, Paris, France
- 2011 Twenty houses, Rooms with a view, Faymoreau, France
- 2012 Helsinki National Library competition, Finland
- 2012 Office building renovation on Parc Monceau, Paris, France
- 2013 350 apartments and a cinema in Batignolles, Paris, France
- 2013 Office building renovation Avenue de la Grande Armée, Paris, France
- 2013 Five Aesop cosmetics shops, Paris, Geneva and London
- 2014 Offices and activities building, in Massy, France
- 2014 110 apartments in Massy, France
- 2014 Retail building, Design district, Miami USA

Artist’s Studio Mosquito Coast Factory

SITE: Campbon, France
DATES: 2010-2012
ARCHITECT: Tolila+Gilliland, Gaston TOLILA (conception)
CLIENT: Mosquito Coast Factory, Benoit-Marie Moriceau
MISSION: conception
PROGRAM: Artist’s Studio
SURFACE : 550 m²
PHOTOS: Philippe RUAULT

This is not a shed. This is an island. The question posed by the client/artist was the possibility of a cultural island in an industrial site, the concrete fabrication of a utopic site for living, research and production. The architectural response is the result of a research towards a vocabulary of elements which could give meaning to this ambition. The cubic mass of galvanized steel in echo with the industrial façades of its environs; the monumental doors, only barely perceptible, sliding to disappear into the interior; the systematic organization of functions; the repetitively of interior grids; the modularity of uses, the potential framework provided for the artist’s future experimentations; the expression of the raw nature of materials; the desire for details precisely drawn; the effect of surprise in each sequence of discovery; the great central nave and its lateral storage cells; the platform for exhibitions and the platform for living/sleeping; the affirmed symmetry, reinforced by two monumental stairs; the strong sense of place; the soft diffusion of light from the north façade in reference to artist’s studios of the last century; the doors which open onto the landscape beyond; the simplicity of plan and the economy of means. It is with the sum of all these elements that I imagined this place, inhabited and full of life. This is not a shed. This is an island.