Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are designers with a functional but malicious aesthetic who have worked at the heart of the museum. Within an atrium with a clear floor that reflects light, they have created an autonomous structure for the café covered with a cameo sky of heat-formed textile tiles. The same technique has been employed for the shop in the gallery. These areas are intended to be open to the museum but sufficiently comfortable to define their primary functions. The café is organised around a canteen-style space with two long wooden tables and a “relaxation” area in the ficus garden. The similar structure of the shop is set out like a market stall inside the exhibition hall.

The Audiolab project sits at the intersection of design, music and visual arts. Initiated in 2000, it is co-produced by Mudam Luxembourg, whose collection houses the three works created for this occasion, two of which are on view in the Jardin des Sculptures. At the initiative of Hervé Mikaeloff (b. 1969, Neuilly-sur-Seine) and Jean-Yves Leloup (b. 1968, Paris) – both curators and the latter also a sound artist and DJ – various French designers were invited to imagine a listening unit geared toward welcoming visitors into the ideal conditions for diffusing music. Patrick Jouin (b. 1967, Nantes), Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec (b. 1971 and 1976, Quimper) and Laurent Massaloux (b. 1968, Limoges) were selected, first and foremost, for their attention to traditional design, as well as contemporary art and exhibition design. Representing a young generation of designers, they developed a system that closely considers the relationship between the space and a mode of attentive and prolonged listening. A playlist was especially conceived for each of these immersive structures, bringing together international practitioners. The sonic pieces were thus commissioned from musicians who flout the rules and genres of music, as well as contemporary artists who do not necessarily work in this medium. Experimental in its interdisciplinary approach, the project enabled a close collaboration between the designers, artists and musicians, the latter relying upon the detailed plans of the units to create their acoustic works with the aim of heightening the perception of the environment in the viewer through the duration of the experience.