The new facade and lobby appeared in the National Museum of the Middle Ages as part of the Cluny IV project - a five-year modernization, which will be completed in 2020. Before the modern project, the complex consisted of three components: the ancient Roman baths, the late Gothic mansion-hotel and the part of the 19th century that connected them, hence the number "four" in the title. The entrance to the museum needed a radical update: it was not only inconvenient for the constant flow of tourists and did not correspond to the high status of the institution, but also did not take into account the standard of a barrier-free environment under the 2005 law. Now these logistical problems have been solved, but the project was difficult for many other reasons. The construction was carried out on a rich cultural layer, next to the most valuable ancient buildings; it was also necessary to take into account the general context of the Latin Quarter when developing the exterior.
Bernard Desmoulins won the competition with the idea of a compact structure of two volumes with a "textured" facade. The building spot is only 250 m2 (16 mx 16 m), the piles are located taking into account the recommendations of archaeologists - in order to be minimally embedded in the soil saturated with history. The bridges are thrown over the caldarium, at the same time serving as its protection. The architect planned to sheathe the building with bronze sheets, but they turned out to be too heavy (structurally, the building is "suspended" from the ceilings, and therefore its mass is of great importance), and his choice fell -
modeled on the French Embassy in Warsaw, Bernard Zerfus - on a cast aluminum panel. Unlike the silver Polish model, the Parisian one is covered with a golden brown "patina". Some of the panels are made of openwork, "guipure": their pattern is taken from stone carvings in the chapel of the Gothic part of the museum complex. The rest are either smooth or covered with a relief organic pattern. Desmoulins compares his building to a ring on the finger of a museum, which seems to be telling a passerby about its renovation. The second image, proposed by the author, is a palimpsest, a fusion of materials and eras, a Roman city in its essence, which has more and more layers. Both comparisons are quite expressed in visually and tactilely rich material.
Inside, on an area of 900 m2, there is a large staircase, two lifts, an information point with a ticket office, a bookshop, a cloakroom and bathrooms. There is also a pedagogical hall (for school groups), a restoration workshop and a temporary exhibition hall (70 m2). The project budget was 4,200,000 euros.
