Architecture with meaning

"Architecture cannot be restricted to a visual quest for Beauty(...). Architecture nowadays has to mean something. It must speak, narrate, interrogate (...). It must address the spirit rather than the eye, express a living civilisation rather than a heritage. (...) the architect is a communicator, speaking to those who go and see the space he has defined. (...) Only with a knowledge of the context, the environment in which he is building, can he find real meaning. (...) Seeking information, verifying hypotheses and giving a direction to the decisions made are necessary conditions for the creation of architecture (...)."

Seeing
We have seen the close relationship between the industrial heritage of the mine (life below) and the meadows, cows, cornfields, miners' cottages, level-crossing keeper's house, the village (life above). We have felt the tension between the modernity of the project on the one hand and the history and geography already inscribed in the landscape on the other. We have tried to find the "attraction" between these two magnetic poles.

Hearing
We have heard the local people express their refusal to submit, to collapse, their will to revive the courage and technical innovation of their industrial past, and to move forward, without the baggage of pointless nostalgia but with their memories rich in symbols. Rich also in life, in sociability regained; rich in living memory.
We have interpreted: our aim is not to rehash history but to make use of it. We need to be able to blend the old and the new, the familiar and the strange (...).We need to construct situations with a wealth of combinations; we need to invent a new story, accumulate evidence, make connections.

Working
Architects and museum designers have worked together to add substance to the concept while retaining the initial intuition.
We have explored the ideas of contrast and of place:
- Present/past/future
- Heritage/modernity
- Science/technology/society
- Urban/industrial/rural environments
- Children/teenagers/adults/seniors
- Informed visitors/tourists/walkers/the curious
We have also explored the idea behind the recreated Pass'erelle, to act as a link, a line of force for the project; the idea of the connections enabling multiple choices and visits in the plural; the idea of the open landscape, the park with its tower, mountain and paths to be explored and examined in close-up, in a game of discovery.