Almost every day over a period of three years, Ianna Andréadis took photos of the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in the course of its construction. She shared the workmen’s daily lives and kept a passionate record of the various stages that the building site underwent, from the removal of the first clod to the installation of the artworks.

Ianna Andréadis has followed the construction of the Museum since 2003; every metamorphosis that the building underwent aroused her curiosity and adjusted her gaze. Her book preserves the memory of this great Parisian building site, which has given life to Jean Nouvel’s vision and has ensured that the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac is a faithful transcription of the architect’s original vision. It looks back over the six years of a great architectural symphony in which more than fifty specialised workers laboured together within a single unit of space, time and action.

Each very different from the other, these various trades constituted the acts of an architectural opera, responding to particular demands, obeying an inherent logic, revealing the intended building stroke by stroke and gradually, almost mysteriously, contributing to the harmony of the whole. The building is composed of multiple facets which offer themselves to the viewers’ gaze. The plant wall, the glass palisade, the restaurant roof shaped like a dragonfly’s wing, the sun-shade of the Auvent building, the twisted facade of the temporary exhibition Garden Gallery and boxes that project into the garden space express these unique architectural forms.

Gradually, the metal beams, the concrete cores and steel structures were covered over and the Museum’s entire technical environment was deliberately concealed from view. Despite this, Ianna Andreadis was able to haphazardly capture certain of these unusual or poetic moments which already belong to the Museum’s past.

This book offers her unique witness account.

Description

192 pages 21 cm x 15 cm (Italian style)
440 colour photos
Price : 25 €
ISBN 2-915133-29-8 / 2-7557-0171-4
A co-publication by musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac / Panama