Pictet + Broillet Adapts a Nineteenth-Century Hayloft for the Assortment du Crest

Perched on a spur in rolling countryside northeast of Geneva, the Seventeenth-century Château du Crest is a fortified manor home bristling with turrets and pointed roofs. Purchased by the Micheli household in 1637, the property includes a big farm, right now famed for its wine and its pork merchandise. In addition to managing his legacy, the present chatelain, 87-year-old Yves Micheli, has spent his life amassing photos—particularly, landscapes—painted by members of the Geneva faculty or by artists related to town. Within the late 2010s, wanting to make sure the way forward for his assortment, which counts round 300 works, he arrange a basis and charged architect Charles Pictet, of Geneva-based workplace Pictet + Broillet, with changing a disused hayloft to show them. Curated by artwork historians, the museum is open to the general public two days every week, and continues to accumulate works to strengthen its holdings, which span the interval 1720 to 1970.

Serried rows of hanging cowbells announce the doorway and essential stairwell resulting in the Assortment du Crest. Picture © Duccio Malagamba, click on to enlarge.

“To a sure extent, it was as much as me to invent this system,” recollects Pictet of the fee. Situated within the farmyard subsequent to the château, the timber hayloft occupied the second degree of a Nineteenth-century stone cow barn that had been rebuilt after a serious hearth in 1989. With its concrete-block and rubble-stone partitions, darkish timber siding, and deep eaves, the constructing is the image of idyllic rusticity. Whereas its floor ground now accommodates wine bottling and farm-related storage, “all you noticed upstairs was an enormous void rising into the rafters, with the undersides of the roof tiles uncovered,” as Pictet remembers. His first problem was to get guests as much as the brand new museum. Situated within the farmyard, on the heart of the barn’s shorter, jap facet, the doorway is surmounted by serried rows of cowbells, and takes the type of a beneficiant vestibule, at whose rear rise a stair and elevator (in concrete, to fulfill hearth laws). Fitted with wooden doorways that swing again flush with its lateral partitions, the vestibule stays fully open to the surface throughout museum hours. In a nod to context, the doorways’ inner surfaces, together with a lot of the stairwell, are confronted with the identical corrugated white-metal siding used for the farm’s wine-refrigeration sheds.

Movable partitions provide flexibility for show and occasions. Picture © Duccio Malagamba

Corrugated sheet metallic traces the stairwell. Picture © Duccio Malagamba

Rising to the apex of the barn’s roof, the lofty stairwell receives daylight from a gap at its summit, encouraging guests to maneuver upward. In distinction, previous the turnstile on the touchdown, a windowless, low-ceilinged antechamber greets them within the museum correct, fitted out with bespoke coat-check closets. This sequence of alternating enlargement and contraction continues as guests proceed into the hovering quantity of the primary gallery, which runs down the hayloft’s gable wall on its longer, southern facet. Opposite to expectation, the gallery ceiling slopes sharply downward from the gable’s apex, earlier than flattening out to type a low, partition-filled aisle. “Given its enormous dimension, the barn’s roof would have been very pricey to redo, so I sought a method of leaving the envelope intact,” explains Pictet with respect to the dropped ceiling, which, insulated to stringent Swiss requirements, dissimulates museum-grade HVAC within the void above it.

Picture © Duccio Malagamba

Footage grasp on each the perimeter partitions and the partitions; suspended from the flat ceiling, the latter can slide up and down the size of the gallery. “By shifting them shut, you’ve got an intimate cupboard de dessins; widening the hole, you get hold of an area for landscapes or portraits; and by pushing all of them to at least one finish, you open up the gallery for live shows or lectures,” says Pictet of this versatile system. As soon as once more, daylight attracts guests ahead, this time because of a pair of full-height lozenge-shaped home windows on the far finish. “Whereas the reconstructed barn had no specific story to inform, it provided distinctive views throughout the panorama, which is to some extent the topic of this museum,” explains Pictet, who intentionally delayed this encounter with the outside to protect contemplation of the work. “On arriving on the home windows, guests discover themselves framed within the panorama itself,” says the architect. Exterior, the diamond openings echo the château’s pointy silhouette, serving to point that that is no bizarre barn, whereas, inside, they turn into one thing of a leitmotif, because the HVAC vents and ceiling recesses for hid lighting are additionally diamond-shaped.

Lozenge-shaped apertures punctuate the facade. Picture © Duccio Malagamba

Contraction and enlargement proceed when passing from the south gallery to the north, since guests traverse a low area on the barn’s western finish that offers onto a balcony. On the other wall, a display exhibits movies and details about the gathering, with a small kitchen and stockroom tucked away behind. Though the north gallery is actually equivalent to the south, the environment is totally different, partly as a result of colder gentle but in addition to a change in colour: eau de Nil within the south gallery, the partitions are gray-beige within the north. “These photos had been made for properties, so I didn’t need a white dice,” explains Pictet. “I aimed for each a home scale and a spatial generosity and pleasure.” Supplies (pure fir flooring, white-painted wooden ceilings) and detailing (the alternate orientation of closet handles, triangular “acroteria” on the partitions) mirror a sure “pursuit of sensuality” in a easy but refined inside. “It is a little, provincial museum, however I wished individuals to recollect it,” says Pictet, and the sense of place, directly pleasant and idiosyncratic, is certainly palpable.