A temporary footbridge has taken over the inner courtyard of the Geneva Museum of Art and History (MAH). Designed by French visual artist Vincent Lamouroux, it inaugurates the PlasMAH cycle aimed at stimulating reflection on the future of the museum, which is to be expanded and renovated.
The first round of the international architecture competition has just closed, and the name of the project selected at the end of the second round will be known in May, Bertrand Mazeirat, head of the project, announced to the media on Tuesday. Museum of tomorrow at the MAH“The expansion and renovation project should not wipe the slate clean, but should preserve and enhance the value of this museum,” he said.
To highlight the architectural qualities of the building by Geneva architect Marc Camoletti, inaugurated in 1910, the PlasMAH program will explore the potential of the inner courtyard and offer new experiences to visitors. At the rate of one intervention per year, it will be deployed until the museum closes for works in order to nourish the architects’ reflection.
PlasMAH must also make people see spaces differently. “The challenge is to open a museum in 2030 or 2034 that is not obsolete. We have the privilege of being able to test exhibitions, ways of bringing the museum to life. In the future, it will be about attracting visitors for many reasons, including seeing an exhibition,” stressed MAH director Marc-Olivier Wahler.
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Bridge connecting… windows
The first intervention was entrusted to Vincent Lamouroux, whose work is situated between sculpture and architecture. The French artist designed a wooden footbridge, painted white, which allows visitors to cross the courtyard at a height of almost nine metres. Resting on wooden pillars and concrete bases, it connects two façades twenty-eight metres apart, allowing visitors to exit and enter through windows.
“This footbridge disrupts the habits of how to move around the museum. It re-establishes an axis that existed between the openings in the façade and the play of transparency,” explained the artist.
The work, which tends to sway, forces us to slow down. “It weakens our physical supports in the same way that, in a room, our psychological springs are perhaps weakened when faced with a work of art,” he noted.
The bridge received full financial support from a foundation.
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