What was your starting point when designing the project?

My design was guided by three main concerns: the relationship between the identity of the City and its Roman heritage; my own vision of what a public facility must be like nowadays; and of course, the need to highlight the magnificent Gallo-Roman and Roman collections of the city of Nîmes.

Over the last few decades, the city has built its identity on the relationship between its ancient and contemporary elements, thus raising the constitution of a future heritage. This reveals a great audacity from this city, the only French one that associates contemporary and ancient heritage. This policy is a real manifesto for the contemporary creation, in a country which is often turned to the past and suspicious when it comes to deal with the new. I think this mistrust can be explained by certain avatars that marked Modern Architecture, such as tower blocks, or many post-modern architectural constructions, which have destroyed the urban landscapes of our cities.

How did you develop the design concept?

It seemed obvious that I had to create a dialogue based on opposition and complementarity – rather than pastiche or erasure – to create a pleasant cohabitation between ancient and contemporary. It also seemed very clear that I had to design a light piece of architecture, which only recent technology can allow.

In the Musée de la Romanité, this is expressed by the effect of lightness and levitation, in opposition to the mass of the Arenes, anchored to the floor. The two buildings enter in close dialogue thanks to their complementarity: on one side, a round volume surrounded by vertical Roman arches in stone and solidly anchored to the ground, and on the other, a large and floating square volume clad in a toga of glass drapery, in a horizontal movement.

Another strong idea that guided me during my creation process was to think the volumetry and the organization of the building around the traces of the ancient Augustan rampart: I imagined a building being crossed by an interior street that follows the traces of the ancient Roman fortifications. This public walkway, accessible to all free of charge, connects the forecourt of the Arenes to the archaeological garden behind the Museum. We also installed a spectacular reconstitution of a fragment of the propylaea of the Sanctuary of the Fountain, a sacred place dating from the foundation of the pre-Roman city. This first-ever public restitution, together with the transparency of the ground floor spaces around this walkway, invites to discover all the collections of the museum.

What is your vision of a public facility in the 21st century?

I work to evolve the function of this kind of facility. They are guardians of culture and preserving heritage is an immutable foundation. However, the way collections are presented and books are consulted must be desacralized and opened up to all to foster interactions between visitors. My conception of this kind of facility has always been guided by this idea, and it is essential for me to make open, really public buildings, capable to overtake restrictions and regulations coming from the institutions, which often encourage closure.

What are the biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities facing architects working on cultural projects today?

In my opinion, cultural projects can be a great opportunity to create social links. The mission of museums and libraries shouldn’t be restricted to “knowledge keepers”, as a protective case, but to open up and welcome the public and their thirst of knowledge, and to attract new publics and novices, triggering a great diversity of interactions. These facilities must have the functions of transmitting knowledge and educating, communicating lasting and constructing values against the prevailing presentism and the destruction of our civilization by predatory practices. The greatest challenge is to convince institutions to make these facilities effectively public.

My architecture is urban, it extends the city. For example, in Nîmes, I’ve created a museum in close relationship with the city, thanks to its interior street that crosses the building and to its upward path, in a constant search for openness. More than that, people who can’t or who don’t want to pay the ticket for the museum can all the same benefit from many spaces of the building such as the interior street, the archaeological garden and the public terrace with panoramic view; this way, they get to familiarise little by little with the museum, to visit it later.