Use of steel is a reference to the other building, overlooking the river and built to contain a casino, restaurant and auditorium on the site of another old salt works which was destroyed in the Second World War.
Malcotti Roussey Architectes + Thierry Gheza completed this museum in the French city Salins-les-Bain.
Closed since 1962, the salt works in Salins-les-Bain have been an important productive site since the middle ages right in the centre of the French city in the Franche Comté. When the competition for restoration of the salt works was announced in 2006, the city authorities had already set the goal of transforming it into a monument to the history of local production with the aim of restoring its original central importance, not only symbolically but in the city’s urban layout: recently made a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the site is intended not so much as a museum of salt but an open-air museum of local history. This is why Malcotti-Roussey and Gheza’s project indissolubly links the goal of protecting the salt warehouses with the goal of revealing their symbolic importance for the city, which translates into a restoration to preserve the complex’s original architecture with declared modern additions. More information, click here
Via Archdaily
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