Bateau Feu National Theatre in Dunkirk by Mikou Design Studio

"A theatre as an open, structuring urban venue"


We conceived the new Bateau Feu theatre in Dunkirk both as an open urban venue - which is welcoming by the diversity of the complementary programme of events and activities that it provides and their strategic orientation in the urban space - and as a structuring civic building and arts amenity located on the Place du Général de Gaulle square.
By its location on Place du Général de Gaulle, the Bateau Feu theatre orchestrates several scales and dimensions, with four free façades that face onto and react to various different urban situations: an intimate domestic scale on the west for housing and the planted garden, a public scale on Rue du Jeu de Paume, a developing future major thoroughfare onto which the shops of the future shopping centre face, and a non-institutional scale on Place du Général de Gaulle which questions the expression of a new contemporary theatre in the city. 
On the east, the façade of the theatre's large hall faces onto the urban space in an architectural and spatial composition which links together the inside and outside of the amenity.
On the south, the theatre "enters the city", welcoming the public in the flow of spaces designed on the urban site. The open, generous entrance foyer - which is itself in dialogue and spatially connected with the large hall on the ground floor - and the small hall, the café bar, the bookshop and the lounge areas on a south-east diagonal which links together these social meeting-places.
The glazed monumental staircase leading to the raised foyer and to the upper entrance to the large hall, placed on the south façade on the side of the entrance esplanade, also participates in this spatial scenography of the theatre's significant spaces. Visually, it opens the space on the underside of the forum pierced by large voids, allowing through top lighting and revealing the volume of the large hall.
A chandelier designed like a lighted canopy increases the theatrical effect and corresponds to the vibrations of the internal space.