The Beaubourg Centre, Chanéac

"This famous right angle, a cream pie of contemporary architecture, comes at a time when painters and sculptors have detached themselves from neo-constructivist theories in favour of an increasingly lyrical baroque style. This leads us to believe that the right angle in architecture must be lagging behind painting and sculpture." Michel Ragon

 

This exhibition showcases the exceptional collection acquired by the Frac Centre-Val de Loire around the project presented in 1971 for the Centre Pompidou competition by the artist and architect Chanéac in collaboration with Pascal Häusermann and Claude Costy.

 

Comprising more than 80 drawings and the model produced for the occasion, the project bears witness to the painter's approach to architecture and the experience of space through sculpture and painting.

 

Chanéac's project is diametrically opposed to that of prize-winners Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, inaugurated in 1977. Chanéac imagined a complex organic structure based on a gushing arch and an enveloping arch: large curved volumes of varying sizes, opaque or transparent and intertwined, spread out over the entire esplanade around a water feature.

 

Chanéac advocates architecture that is "sculpture and landscape, thrilling (...), rich and complex, in radical opposition to an architectural philosophy that seeks to create very neutral volumes so as to efface itself in front of the works it houses". In his view, it should "trigger audio-visual experiments" and generate multiple and unexpected uses.