Electronic music is a relatively new subject for architecture. Most electronic events take place in venues that were not originally designed for them—clubs, warehouses, fields, stadiums. For the Grenoble project, the challenge was to invent a specific architectural setup that could support a new type of performance and relationship with the audience, while still allowing for more traditional concert configurations.

The site is a former industrial district now undergoing transformation. The venue is built next to Le Magasin, Grenoble’s Contemporary Art Center, housed in a late 19th-century hall constructed by the Eiffel workshops. In this changing context, the project takes the form of a five-branched volume that gives equal importance to each of its façades. This multidirectional, autonomous shape frees itself from future surrounding developments, ensuring that its identity will not be weakened over time.

The architecture is raw and efficient, wrapped in a skin made of thick larch planks installed with irregular gaps. The appearance of the wood gives the building a character that sits somewhere between archetype and hyper-contemporaneity. This outer envelope offers glimpses of the more mysterious world inside. The architecture plays on the contrast between the abstract, rough wooden shell and the hall façade—a suspended, curved glass curtain wall that is light and transparent. Its fluid line gives the interior volume an organic quality, reinforcing the contrast between the outer shell and the body contained within.

The whole forms an organism whose heart is the concert hall, from which the other spaces are organized.

The space is designed so that each spectator can move around and change atmosphere freely during the event. The hall is conceived as an asymmetrical shell, allowing artists flexibility in how they arrange the space. Platforms at different heights are provided for DJs. Extending from the main hall, the “chill-out” area is a calmer space, continued by balconies where people can get fresh air or smoke a cigarette during the concert.

The entrance pavilions form two urban stage frames. They are elevated, placing spectators on display within these frames so that they become actors in the urban spectacle, blurring the traditional boundary between performer and audience.