2021

Saint-Dié-des-Vosges

As part of a redevelopment project, the city of Saint-des-Vosges sought to create a new square paying tribute to Jean-Jacques Duval, a local industrialist and architecture enthusiast who had commissioned his friend Le Corbusier to build him a factory. The factory is still in operation today and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This new space, designed in collaboration with heritage architect Aurélie Husson, features various elements: landscaping, pink sandstone pavers, and benches also made of sandstone, designed according to the Modulor principle. We were brought in to find a way to tell visitors the story of this square. There was no need to add informational displays; the benches and their pink sandstone could fulfill this need. This is where our project took shape. For each bench, a piece of the square’s history. The first concerns Le Corbusier and the Usine Verte, the second Jean-Jacques Duval, and the third recounts Le Corbusier’s interest in the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence. In dialogue with the large Golden Ratio engraved on the square, we added two cubes featuring this motif. The chosen typeface, Futura, has characteristics that resonate with Le Corbusier’s architecture, just as the colors of the text on each bench echo those of the building (green, red, yellow). The texts were engraved directly onto the pink sandstone. The principle: all titles are raised, while the narrative texts are recessed and filled with color. On each bench, the information is in French, German, and English.

Design team — Ruedi Baur, Maren Hollmann, Alexandre Moriceau, and Morgane Pontis