© Eugeni Pons
The corners and edges of the exposed concrete cubes look as if they have been cut with a sharp knife. As a result of dispensing with any kind of parapet flashing and joints this school of music and dance in Belfort seems like an abstract sculpture positioned between the city and the landscape.
The architects regarded an exposed concrete surface as too sterile and so they had artists cover the building envelope with a camouflage pattern that corresponds with the branches of the nearby mature trees and the shadows that they cast. The artistic reference here is to Jackson Pollock’s “Drip Paintings” from the 1960s in which he dripped paint across canvas spread out on the floor. So that they could also apply the pattern evenly to the vertical walls and horizontal soffits the artists, working on hydraulic platforms, developed their own brushlike tools.
While the facades towards the surroundings were covered with a net made up of two different shades of blue that is spread across the grey exposed concrete, in the incised internal courtyards this principle was reversed. Here, where according to the architect the entire energy of the building condenses, the concrete was primed in black and then daubed with white paint.
The architects regarded an exposed concrete surface as too sterile and so they had artists cover the building envelope with a camouflage pattern that corresponds with the branches of the nearby mature trees and the shadows that they cast. The artistic reference here is to Jackson Pollock’s “Drip Paintings” from the 1960s in which he dripped paint across canvas spread out on the floor. So that they could also apply the pattern evenly to the vertical walls and horizontal soffits the artists, working on hydraulic platforms, developed their own brushlike tools.
While the facades towards the surroundings were covered with a net made up of two different shades of blue that is spread across the grey exposed concrete, in the incised internal courtyards this principle was reversed. Here, where according to the architect the entire energy of the building condenses, the concrete was primed in black and then daubed with white paint.