Le Monde — The Graslin theatre in Nantes, a «public space building»

Trained under Duncan Lewis, Dominique Lyon, and then Jean Nouvel in the early 2000s, Franco-Moroccan architect Manal Rachdi founded his agency, OXO Architectes, in 2009. He develops numerous collaborations, notably with the BIG office, Jean Nouvel, Sou Fujimoto, Nicolas Laisné and Dimitri Roussel. After delivering, in 2019, the residential tower L'Arbre blanc in Montpellier, he is currently completing, among other things, a building project for École polytechnique at Saclay (Essonne) and housing in Marseille.

"When I was a student in Nantes, I spent a lot of time at place Graslin. I lived just nearby, in a 15 m² room. The steps of the theater, that was somewhat my living room. The place where I would go when I wanted to breathe. I could spend hours there, watching people. How they behave in public space, the postures they adopt… It's one of the first things you learn when you're a student of architecture. In any case, it's one of the first things I focused on. Those steps were an ideal observation post for that. There was a small café right next to it, a business school, a hairdressing school, the magnificent restaurant La Cigale, where Jacques Demy filmed his film Lola, a fast-food chain a few meters away… People from all sorts of different worlds crossed paths with each other and with people coming out of the opera.

What struck me about the Graslin theater building is the very generous device it creates in public space, the way it opens onto cours Cambronne, with this very beautiful park. Those large granite steps (thirteen in total) in direct contact with the square come back to my mind every time I go to Nantes. A place of culture, open to appropriation, which brought tremendous encounters into my professional and personal life. You would naturally slip into the theater without realizing it. The fact that I was often sitting there meant that people would offer me tickets. I attended a performance of opera that way, free of charge, with the woman who was to become my wife. It introduced me to this major art form; opera was brilliant. And years later, in 2013, Jean Nouvel invited me to create the sets with him for The Marriage of Figaro at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, with Azzedine Alaïa doing the costumes. I was able to see a seamstress there, and watch sequences redone once or twice until they were perfect.

A place where people exchange

These steps have sentimental value for me. They were our meeting place with my wife and my friend Zaki; they have become a pilgrimage site every time I come to Nantes. They have for me the power of a public square. This is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that there are many staircases in my projects. I have always held the idea that staircases are not only a place of passage, but also a place where one settles, where people exchange.

In the Polytechnique building at Saclay, there are large staircases that become amphitheaters, that become transitional staircases again, that are also meeting places. There was something of that too for L'Arbre blanc in Montpellier, with these staircases that wind along the façade, somewhat New York style. Generosity is what brings places to life. It's what allows us to invent and reinvent uses. Recently, a work of art, a sort of water curtain created by Stéphane Thidet, was installed on the pediment of the Graslin theater. It created quite a subtle relationship with this stone building, its great colonnades, by playing on the tension between interior and exterior. It was magnificent.

The Graslin theater is a fairly beautiful neoclassical building, very well proportioned. It was built between 1784 and 1788 by a certain Mathurin Crucy. It's amusing to discover, by the way, when you do a little research, that architectural histories don't change from one century to another: originally, there was a matter of real estate speculation, a developer (Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin) seeking to increase the value of the land and then a construction site that gets bogged down, missed deadlines, and in the end a budget that nearly doubled… You could be looking at today's situation!

The façade is somewhat reminiscent of that of the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris, which dates from the same period (1782). I'm not best placed to speak of neoclassical architecture, it's not really my field, but the interior is very beautiful as well. The ceiling of the hall, a large dome, is decorated with a huge fresco by Hippolyte Berteaux, the gilded woodwork of the balconies is covered with hand-painted floral motifs…

But the strength of the building really comes from the outside. This theater is an urban landmark. Its hall that opens onto the city has something very generous about it, which you don't find much in public facilities today. I really see it as a "public space building"! A building that fulfills its function and that opens, moreover, onto the world, onto this place Graslin which sits at the intersection of many streets, into which it integrates admirably. When I understood that Mathurin Crucy had also designed place Graslin, as well as cours Cambronne and place Royale between 1780 and 1800, as the architect-voyer [in charge of public works and urban facilities] of the city of Nantes, I was not surprised at all.

An obvious harmony

Between place Royale and rue Crébillon, which leads to cours Cambronne, there is an obvious harmony. It's not cobbled together. You sense that there was genuine thought given to spatial and urban distribution. You perceive on this square, in its rather compact space, in the relationship it articulates between the height of buildings and the dimensions of the public space, a rhythm that orders the proportions. What is urbanism but a matter of harmony and structure?

Looking at the square from the steps is a pleasure, and this pleasure spills over onto the theater. The building and public space really function in concert. The first structures the second. To the point that they ended up making the square pedestrian. You get the sense that the theater was calling for this pedestrianization. I very much like this idea that buildings can impose urban uses."

— As told to Isabelle Regnier