New York-based IMREY CULBERT in joint venture with SANAA of Tokyo have been selected winners of the competition for a new 64 million euro satellite museum of the Louvre to be located on a 62 hectare former mining site in Lens, France. IMREY CULBERT and SANAA were chosen from a group of three finalists that also included Zaha Hadid and Rudy Riciotti...
In April 2005, IMREY CULBERT and SANAA were chosen from over 120 qualifying international teams to participate in the competition.

The team’s Associate Architects and Museum Design Specialists, IMREY CULBERT established the global group consisting of: SANAA (principal architects); Mosbach Paysagistes (landscape architects); Bureau Michel Forgue (economist), ARUP (lighting); Transplan, Hubert Penicaud, Betom, Avel Acoustique, Bollinger & Grohmann, Groupo Casso, and Sasaki (engineers).

The competition program is for a building that will “educate and allow the public to view the collection transversally,” repealing the classic “departments” with which the art, in the Parisian palace, has been confined. Over 20% of the total building budget will be dedicated to Museography, demonstrating an unusually high focus on “content” over “image," for a new museum.

The new museum will serve to host the diversity of the Louvre’s collection. In the words of Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre, the museum will “teach anew how to look at art.”

IMREY CULBERT and SANAA are collaborating on the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion which will open in Spring 2006.

For more information please contact Craig Intinarelli at IMREY CULBERT at 212.674.0010 or by email at cintinarelli@imreyculbert.com

IMREY CULBERT: www.imreyculbert.com
SANAA: www.sanaa.co.jp