Virginie Pigeon
Centre Liègeois des sciences et des techniques. ISA Saint Luc Liège (Belgium)
Opposite the future station of Liège stretches to the Meuse a piece of waste ground with modest houses at the edge. It is only occupied by the "block of finances", an imposing administrative implantation from the sixties. On this site, the project of a scientific and technological museum is issued from two considerations:
The first one: coming out of an impressive building, which Calatrava's station is going to be, the visitor will discover an image of Liège. This part of the city deserves to be unified and qualified again. The public space needs character, it forms the new centre of an emerging district.
I tried to find a graphic and spacial system to give a strong image to this fringe, and to make comprehension of the city easier. A system that returns its lost identity to this field. So there is a big public space, a linear game of brick and concrete, mineral and vegetable duet, in which the museum must live without breaking unity. So it borrows the same composition system: the strips of bricks from the ground sink to receive the museum rooms. Interior and exterior are confounded, and the limits are ambiguous. Groundwork of the site, these buried spaces contain the memorial part of the project.
The second one: The museums that are impressive to us often have a visually simple, conspicuous and well-defined form. The mind holds it back easily: a symbol, a sign. In addition to the ground work, the project finishes itself in a pure volume, floating over the public space and giving an opposite face to the station. Abstract and universal form, these spaces include the futuristic, interactive and surprising part of the museum.
From these two points, there is a work on the atmospheres. While the floating volume is taking a technological expression, the buried part, joining a mineral zone and a vegetable zone, lets itself be invaded by nature. The brick covers itself with moss and even dissolves in the park which is composed according to the same design
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