St Nazaire’s waters in the Loire
estuary haveknown drama:
romance
as
transatlantic
steamboats came and went,
triumph building France’s
greatest passenger liners,
tragedy when the Nazis sank
RMS Lancastria with 4,000
aboard and heroism in the
1942 British raid that blocked
the harbour. Now, the town
brings drama ashore, in the
shape of the new €21m Théâtre
St Nazaire, designed by Paris
practice
K-architectures
Karine Herman, who along
with Jérôme Sigwalt founded
K-architectures in 1993, says it
is ‘quite a radical project’. While
the theatre’s configuration of
spaces is dictated by function,
radical certainly describes
the dramatic and defining
deployment of decorative
elements. It is a building that
unashamedly performs through
visual flourishes, and with its
repurposing of an abandoned
station and the creation of
a plaza it is an exercise in
urbanism that transforms
a grim location into a new
cultural zone. From 1867,
trains from Paris disgorged rail
passengers into a station for
transfer to transatlantic liners
docked directly alongside it.
The deep port was a perfect
base for Hitler’s U-boat fleet,
and in 1941 the quayside of
St Nazaire was blocked by a
gargantuan concrete bunker
built to house it. The sheer
mass of it, 18m high and
130m long, cut the town from
the sea and still menaces it
today. Allied bombing took out
the railway station but its two
connected entrance pavilions
and a quayside arcade
survived. The station was
relocated in the Fifties, leaving
the abandoned remnants of the
original structure hemmed in
by the bunker, and later, a retail
shed occupied by hypermarket
chain Carrefour, facing its
entrance. Demolishing the
bunker was considered, but
instead the town decided
to launch a competition to
design a theatre behind it, with
something of the spirit of the
town. Joël Batteaux, ex-urban
planner and now mayor of St
Nazaire, notes that ‘the port
created the town’. The theatre
fulfills his objective to ‘return
the town to the port’. The
new theatre rises behind the
Below left: The theatre,
including its single-storey
foyer cafe (left) and woodclad
artistes’
facilities
(right), borders a new
plaza.The plant pots have
subsequently been painted
in bright colours
Right: The main concrete
volume
rises
behind
restored remnants of the
1867 St Nazaire railway
station.
Right, below (clockwise):
Ground-level plan of the
Théâtre St Nazaire and
plaza; western facade of the
flytower; Jérôme Sigwalt
and Karine Herman of K
architectures.
station’s western pavilion. The
main volume is essentially
a solid box matching the
bunker’s height, with a 24.5mhigh flytower. The obvious
distinguishing characteristic
is the flamboyant treatment of
its concrete shell. Floral motifs
cast into the smooth concrete
repeat across its vertical
surfaces. ‘I transformed the
material into velvet,’, says
Herman, with satisfaction.
‘I softened it’. The effect
is a clear reference to the
nostalgic magic of theatre, as
well as creating a light, lyrical
counterpoint to the rough,
stolid bunker. The motifs’
evocation of flock wallpaper
is heightened by its absence
in occasional vertical strips of
blank concrete. As if Herman’s
surface effect was not enough
to signify the building’s
function, the long north-south
sides are further emblazoned
with ‘Le Théâtre’ in raised
metal
letters
mounted
with LEDs, which are also
scattered across the facades
like stardust, in a joint design
between K-architectures and
Autobus Imperial.
SPECIAL K
k-architecures has brought drama
back to the harbour of St Nazaire
in the shape of a new theatre that
contrasts the old and the new.
reworking pavilions from the old
rail station and hard by a nazi
submarine silo, the theatre is a new
act in the unfolding story of thpractice, reports herbert wright
4
STUFF OCTOBER 2014