L’ARTÈRE MUSÉALE

MUSÉE DE LA CULTURE HAITIENNE À JACMEL | MUSEUM OF HAITIAN CULTURE IN JACMEL

Capitale culturelle et pôle touristique majeur de la République d’Haïti, la Ville de Jacmel est un véritable musée en soi. Considérant le manque criant d’équipements culturels sur le territoire, et ce, en dépit des maintes collections artistiques et ethnographiques existantes, l’idée de créer un musée de la culture haïtienne représente une excellente occasion de concevoir un espace ouvert à tous, où art et vie civique s’entremêlent. Le site choisi longe un nouvel aménagement paysager en bord de mer. Afin de proposer une manière innovante de repenser le parcours muséal, le bâtiment est conçu comme étant une extension de cette promenade.

Cultural capital and major tourist center of the Republic of Haiti, the City of Jacmel is a real museum in itself. Considering the glaring lack of cultural facilities on the territory, despite the many existing artistic and ethnographic collections, the idea of creating a museum of Haitian culture represents an excellent opportunity to design a space open to all, where art and civic life intertwine. The chosen site runs along a new landscaping by the sea. In order to propose an innovative way of rethinking the museum route, the building is designed as an extension of this promenade.

At the foot of one of the most impressive Gingerbread houses in the capital of Haiti, in the district of Pacot, is a small pavilion designed, like its elegant neighbor, by Albert Mangones. Adjoining the property’s swimming pool, the pavilion had been erected as a washroom for women.

Today, it houses the funk and jazz notes of the rehearsals of a well-known Haitian musical group of the new generation. History and creativity intertwine in the space, which, despite its dilapidated state, retains its charm in the shade of the site’s century-old trees.

Our client first wants to renovate the pavilion as it is, making slight modifications, so that it can eventually be lived in, rented out occasionally or used for evenings by the pool. However, she changed her mind and commissioned us to create a second pavilion in the adjacent space, a parent building in a way that would face the existing building and be linked to it by an outdoor space. We had carte blanche.

It was therefore necessary to combine with these two brothers: an authentic object, imbued with history and heritage, and then another, definitely contemporary but sensitive to the sense of place and echoing the first, its eternal neighbour.

The new pavilion, by its shape, evokes the morphology of the existing one and initiates a dialogue between the two. Its envelope unfolds from the ground, becoming in turn ground and roof: this allows an opening towards the site from all sides, for a better integration with nature and the environment.

The difference between interior and exterior is difficult to perceive. The partitions delimiting the different spaces, although adopting the authentic material of the place (wood), compose a contemporary language of rhythms of varied wooden slats, in order to control intimacy and visà-vis.