Location: Marciac, France.

Architect: atelier d’architecture King Kong.

Inaugurated in the spring of 2011, the Astrada performance hall, created by the King Kong architecture studio in Marciac, is a remarkable building. Dedicated to the famous jazz festival which had, until then, no permanent place specifically devoted to the international events that take place there, it has been unanimously acclaimed. The artists, but also the whole of the large public – amateurs from all over France and abroad – who flock to Marciac in the summer, and above all its inhabitants, have been able to benefit from its comfort, its layout space perfectly adjusted to the tenor of the events taking place there. The Astrada is also unanimous among historians and architectural critics. Its elegant volume, devoid of ostentation, allows the building to fit smoothly and smoothly into a town marked by its medieval past as a bastide, as well as by the presence of an interesting religious heritage – testimony the presence in the Gers of southern Gothic, characterized in particular by a certain concern for formal rigor and economy of means.

Borrowing the bases of its own language from the various elements in place, transposed and stretched towards a contemporary architecture, respectful of the past, but refusing pastiche, the Astrada retains in particular, rhythms founding the soul of the bastide, its lines and cadences specific. To the authenticity that springs from the low houses, with walls devoid of vain primer, it responds by adopting stamped or deactivated concrete left raw, for all its main surfaces, although the walls come alive, in connection with functional needs, windows interpreting the gothic accolade arches, while the arrangement of rustic wooden logs evokes the presence, still very perceptible, of lambrequins on a number of old dwellings in the bastide.
The envelope of the building, both smooth and rough, expresses as no artifice could have done what constitutes the substance, fruit of the reasoned accumulation of the centuries, of the city of Marciac. Without make-up, and without lies, it refers to the pasts that make up the plural, and yet homogeneous, identity of the Gers city. Without backwardness or inappropriate nostalgia, and while refusing to freeze Marciac in the role of a place of tourist pilgrimage, it endows the city with equipment commensurate with the influence of its exceptional festival, and in this it is the echo of its dynamism.

Photo credit: Arthur Péquin.