This theater, known as the Carré Silvia Monfort (1 565 m²), commissioned by the city of Paris, stands inside Georges Brassens Park (15th arrondissement), embedded six meters below the rue Brancion and adjacent to a small renovated building of the Parks and Gardens Department. The theater was named after the famous actress, stage and theater director (1923-1991) whom Claude Parent had met on several occasions throughout his career, notably when he designed the decors for the Nights of Burgundy Festival. From the initial sketches to the finalized plans, this project – which is one of the architect’s last projects, along with the Regional Building in Marseille (1987-1991) and the Lillebonne Town Hall (1993-1998) – can be placed in its full historical context thanks to the collections of the FRAC Centre. The traditional program comprises a theater with 415 seats and the usual related spaces (backstage technical areas, green room and dressing rooms, entrance foyer, ticket window and restaurant). The theater itself is shaped like the frustum of a hexagonal pyramid. The metallic framework is lacquered in gray and white. A thin, red metallic ribbon enhances the overall effect of movement in the whole. According to the architect, this form was chosen: “so that the theater could emerge from above the ramp and the Parks and Gardens building. Without it, the building would have been left without any identifying feature and the theater would have looked like an ordinary ‘garden shed’.” Claude Parent seldom utilized this shape, which is also a reference to the ritual and archaic essence of theater, except in this project and the one for the Trièdre des prières in 1980 (spiritual center on Mount Sinai, unbuilt), despite the fact it originates in the coiled forms the architect had been sketching since 1967 on the fringes of the Oblique Function.
Audrey Jeanroy
