ROUEN'S ZENITH.

Boldly signalling its presence in an urban motorway landscape, this new concert hall and exhibition centre provides a framework for diverse events.

Bernard Tschumi has always explored the theoretical parameters of building, from hypothetical projects at London's Architectural Association in the 970s to the actual construction of a School of Architecture at Maine-la-Vallee east of Paris two decades later. Now on the dystopian fringes of Rouen, Tschumi -- who has offices in both Paris and New York -- has realized Le Zenith, a combined conference centre and concert venue together with a long hall for trade fairs. His interests in this case include programmatic flexibility; the flow and interchange of large numbers of people; and the making of significant structure for this ex-urban, motorway landscape.

Leaving the autoroute after a ninety minute drive north from Paris, the motorist initially sees three tilted masts that hold the roof of Tschumi's project in place. Then the bull-nosed, curvilinear pavilion containing conference and concert facilities. And finally the sleek trade hall that extrudes to the west to end in an acutely-cut corner. The masts add structural and sculptural bravura to the rather staid skyline, a gesture -- as in some of Richard Rogers' works -- of futuristic optimism. Not unlike the bookend blocks of Tschumi's Lerner Hall at Columbia University (AR January 2000), but without their ersatz contextual skin, the trade hall with its gridded glazing is one of two datums off which the Rouen project spins. Given Tschumi's predilections for programmatic mixing -- Deconstructivism as complex patterns of use and simultaneous happenings more than Deconstructivism as peculiar form-making -- it seems disappointing that the myriad activities of the trade hail ('fairs, antiques, electronics, dog show s, flower shows') are contained within such a neutral box. While heterogeneous activities may well spread across the site (a former airfield) once further halls are added in a necklace formation to the west and north, the project's architectural energy is generated in and around the semi-exposed pavilion.

Alongside the road and close to parking spaces for many thousands of cars, is a vast forecourt--the second of Tschumi's datums--with one free-standing ticket booth. Its description as a parvis relates this terrain and occasional meeting-place with those before the facades of Gothic cathedrals (Rouen's cathedral, painted with regularity by Monet, being one of France's most famous). The surface of Tschumi's parvis is striated in strips of concrete and tarmac leading to the pavilion entrance; the air above to be pinned with a grid of thin light standards.

In daylight, the warm grey of the building's corrugated steel membrane produces an elegant impression -- it almost recedes compared to more garish cases of motorway shed architecture. But come nightfall when the masts above are washed in changing colours, when crowds gather on the parvis and the illuminated interior becomes visible through glazed horizontal bands, the stage is set for those participatory events Tschumi believes to be the essence of architecture itself. The thin steel carapace is held clear of the ground so that an entire sweep of foyer activity is on view to passers-by. You then notice its tyre-shaped wrapper split apart to create a 21 m-high chasm between that membrane skin and a protected inner world.

This is the almost tangential, ceremonial entrance to the 7000-seat salle de spectacle beneath the three masts. The pavilion is not in fact semicircular. In the entry gap, taut and asymmetrically framed (not unlike the more haptic portal of Steven Holl's Kiasma museum in Helsinki, AR August 1998), the two overlapping skins are seen in section to start and end in straight segments.

Volumetrically, each curving skin assumes a toroidal form so that, proceeding inwards, you feel you are spiralling towards the centre of activity. Inside the foyer, the concert and conference venue is sealed by an opaque concrete surface. The inner core is itself asymmetric, setting up a certain tension amid the rows of 7000 translucent plastic seats but also allowing for useful and flexible compartmentalization.

Tschumi makes no great claims for this inner space. It appears practical: the stage area nudges into the datum strip of the trade hall (where there are also administrative offices); the black-painted ceiling secludes an array of technical equipment; and there are no fussy finishes. Instead, the materiality suggests some description such as Smooth Brutalism. The undercroft of the concert venue pushes out as a curving expanse of fine concrete with only the lightest of grids and joints. As with his art school at Le Fresnoy (AR September 1997), Tschumi's focus is on the in-between space. Here, the tall linear foyer is filled with gentle ramps, refreshment counters and cantilevered, open-rise stairs. Visitors ascend and descend to different levels effortlessly, catching glimpses of activities on other floors.

At night, especially from outside, you notice a subtle slanting of the foyer and exterior skin. One long low window at an upper level registers this shift and recalls-in its illuminated horizontality - Tschumi's longtime fascination with the film strip.

Architect

Bernard Tschumi Architects, New York

Project team

Bernard Tschumi, Veronique Descharrieres, Alex Reid, Christina Devizzi, Lauranne Ponsonnec, Kevin Collins, Joel Rutten, Peter Cornell, Robert Holton, Megan Miller, Kim Starr, Roderick villafranca Structural engineer

Technip-TPS

Facade consultant

Hugh Dutton Associates

Acoustic consultant

CIAL 

Photographs

Peter Mauss/Esto