The territorial anchoring of the Musée du Lodévois et du Larzac is obvious. Its palaeontological and archaeological collections bear witness to the great wealth of the surrounding subsoil. These are made up of a red rock dating from the Permian period called ‘ruffe’, and formed by the combination of clay sediments and iron oxides.
Inventing new relationships based on existing situations, hatching an architectural dialectic between different eras: is this contextual? No doubt, if we refer to the Latin root of the word, contextere, which means to weave links. The tension between old and new, between heritage and contemporary architecture, can then be fascinating.
Paul Dardé's Grand Faune weighs 14 tonnes and dates from 1920. It is on loan from the National Centre for Plastic Arts, where it has been in storage since 2006. It is being presented at the Lodève Museum for the first time.
At work here, instead of technical feats, a widely tested technicality has been deployed. In contrast to the constructive simplicity, a few more sophisticated elements have been planned in specific areas: the quality of the concrete, the floor finishes, overhead light, the discreet integration of artificial lighting, an acoustic treatment of the exhibition rooms, museographic devices (showcases, augmented reality). What we save on the one hand, we invest elsewhere and in a perfectly appropriate way in order to produce sensitive and efficient architecture. The quest is for a certain aesthetic economy, yet carrying a strong symbolic value.
