Dance School for the Moulin Rouge. Paris

Building-portal

Dancing school facade is an enormous stage where a windmill plays main role.

Flitting windmill

The windmill should remain the way it was 100 years ago, retaining its authentic materials. But a stylobate where it originally stays should be demolished. The windmill without the stylobate hangs up in the air and becomes an art object — a city souvenir.

Attraction

Inside of the windmill is an extension of the Moulin Rouge museum. Visitors surveying the exhibition may rise upward from underground space to a mill body and back via elevating platform connected to a mill-wheel. During platform movement pedestrians can see a part of underground exhibition through a hole in pavement.

Exterior space

The building has no stoop, pavement flows inside and becomes a part of the interior. An atrium through the whole building is a large significant space that brings building-to-street interaction. Outer atrium margin is a vast drop-curtain that isolates the building from Boulevard De Clichy and able to change the school exterior completely.

City curtain

A curtain is a flexible display that should be used for Moulin Rouge advertisement needs. Until some particular moment curtain hides the facade leaving just a half of the windmill visible outside. During the show the curtain opens and reveals alight interiors of training rooms and gymnasium at the background.

Light penetration

Street facade is oriented to the south what will cause a rich treatment of light and shade. A portal roof that covers the atrium and a square beneath isolates inner space from direct sunlight. West side of the building is also translucent what brings a light openwork nature to the school building. Spot lights going through mill window bars project ornamental shadows to portal walls.

Parisian sky

The sharp image of the windmill and the air around forever remains in memory of a guest of Paris. New building outlines the silhouette just with its roof and walls, retaining a historically prevalent void around the mill. Either a dancer or a spectator should get the feeling of being always surrounded by skies. Sky ’conservation’ process is controlled by the drop-curtain and sliding mirrors of training rooms.

The competition official website: arquitectum.com
The entry in required demensions: 108738.jpg (2Mb)