La Seyne-sur-Mer Cultural and Leisure Complex - France
DATA
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Biography
DATA is an architecture and design office based since 2010 in Paris and Lyon. “Department of Advanced Typologies for Architecture” is thought as a research and development platform, where new building typologies are explored and promoted.Our projects vary in program and scale.Among the practice’s major recent works are the mixed-used building of Montrond les Bains, achieved in November 2012, the “Lac du Der” Casino completed in November 2014, the Art Foundation of Galeries Lafayette in Paris with OMA / Rem Koolhaas and the “Casino and performance hall of la Seyne-sur-mer” currently under construction.Ongoing current projects include the exhibition and information center for Semapa-Paris Rive Gauche, a recycling center for Ville de Paris and a 3500 sqm commercial floor space in Paris.DATA is composed of a dozen architects, from several disciplines. Our team is led by Leonard Lassagne (b.1982) and Colin Reynier (b.1980), partners.Sylvia Bourgoin joined DATA in 2012 as office manager.
La Seyne-sur-Mer Cultural and Leisure Complex
Sitting on the site of the city’s former shipyards, La Seyne-sur-Mer’s new cultural and entertainment complex is uniquely positioned adjacent to the Toulon harbour waterfront and overlooking the French Mediterranean coast.
To house this project, consisting of a casino, a 700-seat theatre, an exhibition gallery, restaurants and a car park, DATA came up with a simple, neat geometrical solution. The quadrilateral structure oriented towards the sea fits naturally into the orthogonal portion of the plot along the Great Dock and so respects the geometric logic of the whole site. On the city park side, the complex stands as a new "background" and establishes a wide entrance square on the harbour’s driveway.
The chosen structural features and the design of the façade relate to the intertwining and organisational components of the varied functional content within the complex. They also promote the architectural display of its iconic parts, namely: casino halls cantilevered above the harbour, restaurants in panoramic positions, a triple height hall, and the “black box" type modular theatre.
In the centre of the complex sits the theatre, a mineral concrete monolith around which is organised three horizontal programmatic layers. These are: a light base covered in glass panels and aluminium sheet housing the main hall, the exhibition gallery and administrative functions; a 106m-long metal platform cantilevered on both ends with perforated cladding for the casino and car park; and a light reflective metal rectangular prism in a panoramic position housing the restaurants.
The client’s wish for a single public entrance from the forecourt gives the main hall a central role for distributing traffic and regulating flows. It is sized accordingly and designed in triple height to allow a great readability of the organisational system: the exhibition gallery and the performance venue are indeed directly accessible on one level from the reception, an escalator allows an easy access to the casino on the first floor, a core of vertical distribution serves the different levels of the car park as well as the restaurants located on upper floors, and suspended walkways in the hall provide additional passageways between all those entities.
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