The architecture of the Mucem

Facing the sea, on the former J4 dock, the building designed by Rudy Ricciotti (in association with Roland Carta) is the heart of Mucem. This is where the museum’s major exhibitions and artistic and cultural events take place.

The J4 building houses the museum’s major exhibitions on two levels:

• On level 0, the semi-permanent exhibition: the Galerie de la Méditerranée (1,600 m2).
• This thematic gallery is modular in its presentation, and will change every three to five years.
• Level 2: temporary exhibitions (2,000 m2).
  The flexibility of the spaces means that each exhibition can be given the surface area it requires (between 300 m2 and 2,000 m2).

It also features a 335-seat auditorium (for conferences, shows, concerts and film cycles), an audiovisual projection area (“La Médinathèque“, in collaboration with INA), a children’s area (“l’Ile aux trésors“), a bookshop-boutique, and a brasserie and restaurant with a panoramic terrace.

Finally, it incorporates the “behind-the-scenes” facilities that are essential for a facility of this type: workshops, storage areas, offices, conservation and research areas, etc.

Architecture combining technical prowess and aesthetic power

Inaugurated in 2013, the J4 building is already world-renowned for its architecture, combining technical prowess and aesthetic power. This cube of elegant concrete lace forms a perfect 72-metre square. It is held up by 309 arborescent posts, which surround the exhibition halls, freeing the center of the building from any load-bearing function. The pillars are made of BFUP (Béton Fibré Ultra-Performant), a state-of-the-art material that is as flexible as it is resistant.

Freely accessible from the first floor, two outdoor ramps wind their way up to the roof terrace, inviting visitors to experience a fascinating ascending stroll, multiplying the panoramas of Fort Saint-Jean, the open sea and the horizon, visible through the fine concrete mesh that delicately envelops the building.

From the terrace, an aerial walkway leads to Fort Saint-Jean. There are no arches or guy wires here, just a simple line of black concrete suspended 19 metres above the ground. A technical challenge made possible by the exceptional properties of UHPC.

When night falls, the building comes alive with soft lights imagined by artist Yann Kersalé, like a new lighthouse at the gateway to Marseille.

The conceptual bias of Rudy Ricciotti and Roland Carta’s architectural project

Views, sea, sun, minerality are instrumentalized by a program that has become federative and cognitive. First of all, a perfect square measuring 72 metres on each side, a classical, Latin plan under the control of Pythagoras. Within this square is another 52-metre square, containing the exhibition and conference rooms identified as the heart of the museum.

Surrounding, below and above are the service spaces. But between the heart of the building and the service spaces, gaps completely encircle the central square, forming connecting spaces. More interested in the view towards the fort, the sea or the harbour, the culturally distracted visitor chooses this route. Along two intertwined ramps, they plunge into the imaginary world of the Tower of Babel or a ziggurat, climbing to the roof and up to Fort Saint-Jean. This peripheral rift is a demure breath of iodine, with the proximity of a seawater moat to dispel any doubts we might have about the use of our civilizations’ history. The Mucem is a vertical casbah.

The tectonic choice of an exceptional concrete, the result of the latest research by French industry, reducing dimensions to nothing more than skin and bones, asserts a mineral writing beneath the high ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean. A single material with the color of matte dust crushed by light, out of sight of technological brilliance and consumerism, praises the dense and the fragile. The Mucem is evanescent in a stone landscape and orientalist in its shadows on the figure. In the sky, crossing the dock, a flying carpet sails towards the fort.

Building lighting by Yann Kersalé

For Yann Kersalé, the Mucem should be a cultural sounding board for the Mediterranean, enlivened by the sea. This night-time edifice becomes the memory of the Blues: a transition between all the cultures it exhibits, and this mythical sea with its strong character. A perpetual pulsation of light that makes its lacy facades quiver. The sea is there, embedded in the walls to assert its importance in the design of the interior exhibits.

At night, the Mucem reproduces the vibrancy of the Mediterranean in the form of a colored light installation. Yann Kersalé’s lighting scheme highlights all the building’s facades, giving it a maritime and terrestrial visibility, acting as a signal in the night.

The south and west facades are the matrix of the project, where light plays the role of multiple skins present in a cameo of blue and turquoise, giving the impression of an aquatic thrill.

This artistic project benefited from the 1% artistic grant.