LaM – Lille Museum in France is a spectacle of variable art

The Paris office of Manuelle Gautrande Architect has carried out the restyling and extension of the LaM - Lille Museum.

The museum, set in a magnificent garden in Villeneuve d’Ascq, a town in the vicinity of Lille, is much more than a showcase for works of art. The existing building, designed by Roland Simounet in 1983, is one of the list of artistic monuments itself and the new work focussed on both preserving it and at adapting its functions.

This intervention offers many hints on the possibility of intervening on contemporary architecture. Refurbishing a building constructed in the last thirty years provides new challenges for architects and building companies and one of the greatest difficulties may be bringing the technical systems into line with the greater sensitivity to the environment, without completely changing the existing architecture.

The careful refurbishment has permitted an understanding of Simounet's original architecture, then elaborating the strategy of embracing the existing building with a fluid and caressing movement.