spreading or compactness?

Concerning circus facilities, two tendencies are observed through the world.
One of them spreads out, lying on a vast piece of land. It generates what looks like a “village” device, preserving human scale and creating self-expressive objects: show spaces, training facility, reception room, … The pictures it brings are easily interpreted as belonging to the circus world.
The next one is concentrated on the diverse performances such a tool could give. On its ability to offer the possible supports for all kinds of shows and performances. It generates out of human scale objects, excessive spaces whose pictures seem to belong to the business world.

centrality

« Francesco Borromini reached the critical step by deliberately introducing space as the constituent element of architecture. His spaces are complex wholes, a priori given as indivisible figures. This characteristic is underlined by all means at disposal and first of all by the continuity of the walls bordering the buildings. His Saint-Charles-aux-Quatres-Fontaines cloister is a good example of this. Borromini succeeded in creating a spatialunited element by only using the simplest ways. The cloister is surrounded by a continuous system of rhythmically arranged columns. There are no corners, at least not in the usual meaning, since the smallest picture window of the mural system is extended into a convex curve where there should be perfect cornersBy doing so, space is finally drawn as an articulable but not decomposable unit. » C.Norbert-Schulz, La signification dans l'architecture occidentale.

Seeking centrality that echoes with the imagination of traditional circus. 360°. It a spatial stake, an optical, physical, architectural, indeed anatomical device. A metaphysic of the eternal coming straight from horses races.
Circle without circle? A track. Coding the signs of circus shows, already marked by the predominance of this kind of NoBorder relation between stage and public space. The public, by the fact of its omnipresence around the track, is entirely taking part of the stage design. Importance of the relationship we are building up with ”the other”, importance of knowing the multiplicity of the existing point of views.

Importance of the connection with the ground, the weight of the mass that will show an unlimited space. Alteration of the ground as a reference by using everything that moves underneath, above, far away from here. Double dimension of the term “track” : ground and emptiness.

Are we really speaking of centrality? Possible sliding from one space to another, without wings, without definition. Articulations.

program

Quality of a program.
Circus is a matter of space and apprehension of space.
Rare are the programs expressed in three dimensions.
Circus defines its usages far above the ground area.
Three dimensions.

To the circus school facilities we can add Blue Lemon productions and the professional classes from the Institut de Rythmique Jacques Dalcroze. This assembling is aiming the construction of a Centre d’Etudes en Pédagogies Artistiques integrating multiple directions : rhythm, arts of circus, movement, music.

This project is based on the expression of emptiness as a link in between the different components of the building and as an exchange and meeting point, or even a projects’ development spaces. It is the presence of emptiness and its twists and turns within the building that makes the School of Circus a complex and unified tool.
Duality immersion/isolation.

It allows diverse objects supplies and their movements or confrontations within its body. In opposite, this installations feeding the building allow to reduce it to its most significant simplicity. A cube, mysterious and strict object that carry inside the excessiveness of the Circus’ Arts. Needing this confrontation in order to underline the volumetric stakes. A huge wall surrounds the building and contains, restrains, provokes the multiplicity of the internal creative shapes. The golden mesh that cover the building offers two other dimensions: it allows on certain points the infiltration of some golden light inside the building and on some other points develops peculiar “outdoor” training spaces : roof, inner courtyards, slits in between the “surrounding wall” and the skin. The logic directing the openings also gives the alteration of the referent “ground”. It is about removing or altering two walls of each volume. It is the mastery of this openings, trough their positions and their scales that gives to the Cube the whole complexity coming from Circus Arts.