Carré d'Art

The Carré d'Art in Nîmes in southern France is a modern cultural center on the nature of the Pompidou Centre in Paris with a museum of modern art and a public library.

A eröffneter in February 1800 theater building occupied the site of today's Carré d'art with classical stone facade, the arson was destroyed on 27 October 1952. The surviving main facade with its mighty colonnade should initially be maintained even in the case of a new building, not least because of the neighboring Maison Carrée, a perfectly preserved Roman temple of the first century BC.

1984, a competition among twelve charged architects, including Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and César Pelli was decided in favor of the British architect Norman Foster. Foster's building was opened in May 1993.

On the preservation of the theater facade was ultimately omitted despite numerous protests, it was dismantled and reconstructed at the roadhouse Caissargues in the wild. However, Foster's glass front with narrow steel piers picks up the motif of the neighboring columns Maison Carrée and the nine-storey cultural center respected by Lowering of several storeys, the height profile of the place. The energetic meaningfulness of Foster's glass cube in the Mediterranean area was denied in part.