A Contemporary Art Center Blooms Inside An 1893 Eiffel-Style Icon

Limoges has been world-renowned for its porcelain industry for centuries. Today, an equally historic entity is putting the French city on the map. Occupying an 1893 Eiffel-style building, Frac-Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine is a former textile warehouse turned 21,000-square-foot contemporary art center courtesy of Paris firm Jakob+MacFarlane. Part archive, part architectural feat, the studio’s intervention is a study in contrasts: old and new, steel and wood, urban and farmland.

Approaching the structure “as a sleeping beauty,” Dominique Jakob notes, he and Brendan MacFarlane’s response takes the form of a galvanized-steel skeleton nested within the structure’s original frame—“a double,” as the cofounders call it. “The existing construction was very beautiful, quite light—and light-filled,” MacFarlane adds, perhaps referring to the original skylight, now restored. Their insertion allowed for the creation of a research center, offices, and 13,000 square feet of gallery space, which includes the Immersive Box, a two-story volume for performances with enormous hinged doors that can serve as a digital projection surface, its wood cladding referencing the area’s agricultural vernacular. Restored mosaic floor tiles—discovered under layers of cement—further link past and present, project to site.

So does the custom furniture outfitting the mezzanine café; tabletops of recycled sandalwood and chair leather from Limousin cattle are among the regionally sourced materials. A second armature, this time on the facade, enables international contributions. That’s where Japanese artist Takao Minami’s site-specific video heralds the Frac-Artothèque’s debut this spring.