Technology: A Lightweight Structure and Delicate Facades for the Louvre in Lens
- Daniel Pfanner
An international competition was held in 2005 for the new branch of the Louvre in Lens. At that very early stage, the winning Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) had already begun their cooperation with Bollinger + Grohmann. In France, competitions for buildings receiving public funding typically stipulate in the brief that the entire planning team take part. The different services performed by the team include the design of the building and its structure, landscape architecture, lighting design, fire protection planning, building services planning, exhibition design, cost calculation, climatic planning, and last but not least, facade planning. In this case the facade planners’ task involved providing expertise in facade technology, as well as carrying out the structural engineering of the roof and facade.
