Bernard Tschumi’s Massive Wooden Spiral Overlooks Ancient Battlefield

Architizer News

Bernard Tschumi’s Massive Wooden Spiral Overlooks Ancient Battlefield

July 10, 2012

Photo by Christian Richters

In 52 B.C., Roman troops under the command of Julius Caesar surrounded and laid siege to the Gallic town of Alesia, a hilltop fort and the last bastion in Gaul free from Roman rule. Under Vercingetorix, chieftain of the Arverni, the Gauls lost the battle, Gaul became part of the Roman Empire, and later would become the nation of France. Many historians see this as a tragic loss and Vercingetorix as a martyr of sorts.

But history is given over to the winners. A true victor–in the small world of architecture at least–Bernard Tschumi, starchitect, long-ago winner of the Parc de la Villette competition and former dean of Columbia’s GSAPP, has unveiled the completed MuseoParc, memorial, visitor’s center, and museum for the battlefield at Alesia. MuseoParc was designed as two buildings: the museum and visitor’s center, separated from each other by over a kilometer. Though the programs of the two buildings relate to each other, each of the buildings possesses a different character with the museum clad in stone and the visitor’s center clad in wood.

Photo by Iwan Baan

The heart of the visitor’s center is occupied by a staircase which spirals up through an unadorned top-it space to a roof garden that overlooks the reconstructed Roman fortifications, as well as the surrounding landscape of hills and fields in the French Burgundy region. Visitors can also observe the battlefield by circulating around the central space; views are filtered through the patterned wood façade, meant to recall the Roman and Gallic walls that once ringed the site.