The museum, the main theme of which will be corporality in all its manifestations and hypostases, will be erected in the new Park-Marianne area, between the park. Georges Charpac and the town hall recently built by Jean Nouvel. Designing the complex with a total area of 7,800 m2 at the junction of nature and the city, Danish architects have done everything possible to emphasize its "border" location.
The main theme of the project was sidewalks and lawns, which repeatedly flow into each other, not forming, nevertheless, a single whole. Bjarke Ingels himself compares their dialogue with the interaction of substances with different densities: for example, vinegar and oil, which are very difficult to mix.
The museum is interpreted in the form of eight teardrop-shaped one-story pavilions, which are arranged in two fours opposite each other. Their sloping exploited roofs are interconnected by a system of ramps that braid the pavilions with a wide ribbon. Half of the roofs are landscaped, the rest is faced with street pavement, which together creates a feeling of harmonious coexistence within the framework of one project of two elements - natural and urban. The architects, by the way, do not hide the fact that in search of a key image for this project, they first of all turned to the human body - the main character of the future museum. Green and gray "loops" passing into each other are designed to resemble fingers folded into a lock.
Unlike the roofs, the facades of all eight buildings of the museum are proposed to be made as transparent as possible. They are protected from the southern sun by an ingenious system of blinds: the angle of rotation of the lamellas changes depending on which side of the world this part of the facade faces. And again, it was not without bodily metaphors: the constantly changing pattern of "shading" the architects themselves compare with papillary lines on the pads of the fingers.
The jury, led by Montpellier Mayor Hélène Mandroux, awarded the BIG project a victory for innovation, sustainability and exceptional functionality, which, according to experts, should make the new museum popular not only among adults, but also among schoolchildren. Construction of the Museum of the Human Body is scheduled to begin in 2016 and be completed within two years.
