Project "École du Louvre 2021-2022"
An exciting architectural project
The brief was to redevelop the premises of the École du Louvre to meet the school’s needs against a backdrop of growth in student numbers, new developments in teaching and changing student practices. The project covered almost 1300m2 of floor space, and the lead architect was Heleen Hart of HBAAT, the firm that won the Jury d’Architecture Grand Prix in 2021.
The redevelopment took the form of refurbishment of existing spaces and the creation of new ones within the Louvre Palace. Specifically:
- The Library was imaginatively remodelled to allow readers to use it in a wider range of ways.
- A research centre was created to serve the school’s doctoral students.
- The cafeteria and the documentation and IT services were redeveloped.
An extraordinarily generous act of patronage
Majid Boustany’s first partnership with the École du Louvre dates from 2016, when he helped set up a scholarship for students researching the artist Francis Bacon. He followed up this initiative with an extraordinarily generous gesture, funding the “École du Louvre 2021-2022” project. The aim of this ambitious programme of works was to provide the school with facilities that would be a major strategic asset, enabling it to build its national and international reputation and influence in the years ahead.
In addition to this exceptional act of patronage, Majid Boustany donated two sculptures by Antony Gormley and an easel that belonged to Francis Bacon to the school, to stand in the library and in its entrance hall.
Consolidating the École du Louvre’s position as a leading research centre in the wider world
The École du Louvre is the venue of choice for students of art history and museum studies, offering innovative and exacting programmes. Its growing community of PhD students, now numbering around eighty, poses new challenges.
Although the school was housed in stunning premises created in 1998 under the direction of Antoine Stinco as part of the Grand Louvre project, major redevelopment had become necessary. This was the impetus for the ‘École du Louvre 2021‒2022’ project, which set out to create a state-of-the-art hub for study and research at the core of the school, around which its teaching would revolve.
The architect behind the project
Heleen Hart is a Dutch architect who graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage in Lille.
Her career has taken her to Rio de Janeiro, and to Porto where she worked with Carlos Castanheira Architects. Returning to France, she broadened her experience with firms in Paris, including BP architecture, Plan 01, Franck Hammoutène and Architecture Studio, then in Lille with Tank Architectes.
In 2011, she co-founded the architecture and planning studio HBAAT (Hart Berteloot Atelier Architecture Territoire) with Mathieu Berteloot. HBAAT was awarded the Grand Prix d’Architecture in 2021 for the Pont des Arts cinema project in Marcq-en-Baroeul.
Alongside her HBAAT projects, Heleen Hart has taught at the ENSAP school of architecture in Lille since 2011.
The artist associated with the project
Antony Gormley’s Witness VII stands on the floor on the central axis of the library’s narrow entrance corridor, and Witness VIII is inverted, ‘standing’ upside down on the vaulted ceiling, thirty metres from Witness VII.
They are based on a plaster cast of the artist’s own body made while he focused on its inner space. The artworks are industrially cast in iron, the most common element on the planet, acknowledging our species’ dependence on Earth.
Gormley sees the body as a locus of experience, thought and feeling. He intends these specially commissioned works to be considered in relation to our relative positions on a spherical planet, whilst creating an active, generative field across the space of the library.
‘The mass of the works makes them act like fuel rods within the void space of the library. Can they act as energisers for thought during the readers’ ingestion of image, ideas, and feelings?’
Antony Gormley, born in London in 1950, is one of the leading figures in contemporary British sculpture working today.