C2N in Saclay - Topping Out Ceremony with Michel Rémon
Speech by Michel Rémon during C2N Saclay topping out ceremony
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Of course, I’m speaking to those of you who construct this unusual building!
The building is intended to accommodate researchers of the infinitely small in infinitely clean spaces... in the centre of the great Saclay landscape. The volumes that you see were designed to express this clash of scales, on completion of the construction.
The C2N architecture was not designed at a human scale. It was designed to be at the crossroads of all the scales that are at work within it – from the infinitely large (the landscape, sky, etc.) to the infinitely small (the nanometre, and soon, the picometre, ... femtometre!).
From a distance, the C2N will seem rather small, much smaller than today, at the edge of its forest. Up close, no element will give the measure of human scale. This is the intention of the work done together on the north and east windows, the shadow boxes and mirror cassettes.
Our requirements for the implementation, proportions and dimensions of these finishing elements are not "architects' whims". They are the necessary real-world expression of our work on the scale of the building.
An impeccable and elusive building... where the east gable volumes will reflect endlessly in each other to dissimulate their real dimension. Where the edges of these same volumes will brush against each other without touching, as if they are not subject to gravity.
But I stop here - I can't wait to see the completion of construction.
Today, the concrete work of the building is now complete. The volumes you saw when you arrived are still pretty normal, still pretty ordinary. Their scale is still quite commonplace. They have not yet been transformed by the reflective cassettes and frameless glazing, which I mentioned earlier. We shall have to wait several more months.
But seeing the construction site today - that's not what I'm thinking. I think of the winter at the end of 2015. That awful period during earthworks and foundations.
We were a long way from the impeccably clean environment required by researchers of the infinitely small!!!
Rain, mud and flooded excavations were your daily lot - you the contractor whom we salute today during this topping out ceremony.
Know that in our office, behind our computers, we thought of you who turn our drawings into reality.
This short speech is simply to say a big thank you.
THANK YOU!
Michel Rémon