The Espace Riopelle, a pavilion at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, will be dedicated to the work of a single artist: Jean-Paul Riopelle, the abstract expressionist who made energetic paintings with thick, multicoloured impasto. The team from Agence Spatiale and BGLA drew up a layered design — a semi-submerged building rising from the landscape and topped with a double-skinned rotunda — befitting an artist with a love of form in all its dazzling permutations. The central pavilion will house Riopelle’s masterwork — a 40-metre-long triptych entitled Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg — as it was meant to be seen: in a sunlit, immersive space.
Team: Étienne Bernier (Agence Spatiale), Martin Brière, Pierre-André Levesque and Stéphan Gilbert (BGLA) with Jérôme Duval (Agence Spatiale); Raymond Bleau and Dominic Samson (SNC-Lavalin); Claude Létourneau, Alexandre Dufresne and Éric Vaillancourt (Pageau Morel et associés); Gunther Conard (Macogep)
A semi-submerged building rising from the landscape, Espace Riopelle pays homage to a vital artist.