Les Bains des Docks

Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Swimming center in Le Havre

Abstract

Jean Nouvel’s cities are great theatres with roles often reversed. The scenario is written by the spectators, the direction is entrusted to light, the photography to the memory. Each project is a new spectacle, different in every way from the previous. The only constant is the won- der of research via the use of common, industrial materials. Rigorous, unequivocal materials which, once assembled and brought into the light, seem, paradoxically, to replace the physical world with a world of imagination, suspended between desire and memory. It is in this way he places metaphors, allusions, rhetorical figures and suggests the transcending of reality and «to amplify our world, in a moment in which our world becomes ever smaller». The natatorium of Les Bains des Docks is a haven of light, air and water. The building overlooks quai de la Réunion in the place of old, abandoned hangars. It is the first structure of an ample project for the renovation of the old port of Le Havre.