FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais

The FRAC holds a regional public collection of contemporary art, conserved, archived and shown to the public through exhibitions on site and loans to galleries and museums.

The new institution stands on a port site, next to a former boat warehouse known as Halle AP2. Its interior is immense, bright and striking, with exceptional potential for use. Installing the FRAC as a catalyst for the new district while keeping the hall whole became the founding idea of the project.

The French design team built a double of the hall, of the same dimensions, attached to its seaward side and containing the FRAC programme. The new building sits alongside the old one without competing with it or fading away. Under a light, bioclimatic envelope, a prefabricated and efficient structure creates open, flexible floors with few constraints. Through the transparent skin, the opaque volume of the art stores can be seen. A public footbridge first planned along the façade now crosses the building as a covered street, entering the hall and the inner face of the FRAC.

The old hall remains a fully available space. It can work with the FRAC for large temporary exhibitions or the making of large-scale works, or on its own for concerts, fairs, shows, circus and sport. Its existing quality called for only minimal, targeted interventions, and savings in the project allowed the budget to cover both the FRAC and the equipment for public use of the hall. Completed in 2013 after a 2009 competition, it gives the regenerated port a public resource that works from everyday exhibitions to major international events.