The winning design in the architecture competition "BLEU" for the new MCBA

13.7 - 11.9.2011

"BLEU" by Estudio Barozzi Veiga, Barcelona
A new Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts and a superb cultural project for the Canton de Vaud

The jury of the architecture competition has unanimously chosen the project "BLEU" by the architects Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga in Barcelona as the winner.

The project "BLEU" by Estudio Barozzi Veiga, a young architectural firm from Barcelona, has proposed a new public space dedicated entirely to culture in a site that has been prohibited to the public for more than a century. It respects the spirit of the place by its longitudinal layout parallel to the railway tracks and its capacity to function as an interchange – no longer for the locomotives but for artworks of all ages and for all publics. The MCBA project offers all the public services one would expect from a twenty-first-century museum: restaurant, bookshop, library, auditoria and children's workshops. The "BLEU" project promises magnificent exhibition rooms whilst maintaining all the international safety norms, allowing us to set off all the treasures in our keeping at their best. And lastly, the project's impressive and elegant architectural simplicity will anchor the MCBA firmly in the heart of the city. It gives the museum every chance of creating a museum pole (from hereon called "Platform") and provides us with a remarkable promotional asset.

With the aim of undertaking a cultural project of major importance and extending the influence of the Canton of Vaud in the field of fine arts, the cantonal government included the construction of a new building for the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts (MCBA) among its primary goals during its term of office. Consequently, in 2009 it carried out a carefully detailed assessment of possible sites throughout the whole canton and decided on the CFF locomotive shed in Lausanne as the most suitable. The site of the locomotive shed next to the passenger station lies at the heart of Vaud's capital. The cultural rehabilitation of this industrial site thus has immense potential: the immediate proximity of a station expected to increase in size and be developed in the mid-term, and the central position not only in relation to the city of Lausanne and the regional traffic but also in the network of large European railway lines are huge assets for a museum whose goal it is to act as a crossroads for the interchange of culture, heritage, knowledge and education.

With strong backing from the CFF and the City of Lausanne, the cantonal government then set up an international architecture competition. Out of the 136 candidatures received, the competition jury – co-presided by the eminent English architect David Chipperfield – selected 18 studios to take part in the competition. This had two themes: on one hand the design of a new MCBA and, on the other, the development of a concept for a museum and cultural centre on the large plot measuring 22,000 square metres. The anonymous competition terminated with the selection of a project that not only completely satisfied the requirements described in the specification but added an essential aesthetic dimension and allows the creation of a veritable museum pole – including, next door to the MCBA, the Musée de l'Elysée ("A museum for photography") and the mudac (Musée de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains), and possibly artists' studios and other cultural infrastructures – that will foster an unprecedented collective dynamic.