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• Hyperbody TU Delft

City of Fountains. Lausanne is the city of fountains. Right from the entry of the museum there is a classic fountain and on the left a grid of small interactive fountains. The water stops flowing when visitors approach one of the hundreds of fountains, as if the water was cut by walking over the grid. The new Museum of Fine Arts of Lausanne is waterfront architecture. In the interior, the public is elevated up to the “nose” of the building which offers a panorama of the lake and surrounding mountains.

Gradual perspective transformation. The exhibition spaces of the permanent collections are conceived as a series of half-open rooms of variable in width and height. Each new space is the gradual transformation of the previous space. The path through the museum is felt like a walk in a baroque perspective, the attraction point on its extreme end seems closer than it really is, which has the effect of bringing the public closer to the waterfront from the moment they enters.

Panorama point. At the end of the series of exhibition spaces, the visitors find themselves in the panoramic space, virtually enlarged by the projection of numeric information on the glass front. This space can be used as an exhibition space for interactive performances. Here the visitors take a 180 degrees turn before continuing to the temporary exhibition spaces in the mezzanine.

Two headed body. The museum of Lausanne is conceived as a two-headed body. On the city side, the two heads are very distinct, one for the public entry and the other for the elevated office spaces. In the transformation of the sections, the two limbs join in one body, which cantilevers over the public pier. Behind the nose  the ublic can climb up to the gardens and the terraces, where they can rest in the sun or the shadow of the hood. The office and stocking spaces, the private terrace and the technical room are found on the upper floor, accessible by the lateral entrance reserved for staff and delivery.  

3D skin. A three dimensional skin, horizontally stretched, organizes the light coming from the exhibition spaces. On top of the building, the 3D skin acts as a protective roof, letting in only the indirect light. On the  side it acts as a permanent but adjustable sun shading system stretching over the west side of the exhibition spaces. The north face is closed, which permits the operation of a lateral progression between the daylight en the programmable artificial light environment.

Design: ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd]

Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd, Rafael Seemann, Michael Gorczynski, Paulina Gurak

Site: Lausanne

Date: 2004