News 90
Museums as Peaceful Spaces for Reflecting on Conflict

On the 26 October, studioMilou’s founder Jean Francois Milou and Senior Partner and Director of the studio’s Vietnam Office, Nguyen Thanh Trung, will present two of the company’s experiences in museum-making at the ICOM ICAMT 49th Annual Conference, to be held this year in Porto.

The presentation will present two most recent museums from Southeast Asia, with a focus on how adaptive reuse designs can propose a peaceful resolution of past and current seemingly opposing forces, within a meditative architectural landscape.

The designs to be presented by the studio in Southeast Asia emerged from the company’s long track record of creating cultural institutions in France; the most relevant being the Maritime Museum of Cherbourg, in Caen, Normandy. Dedicated to submarines and ocean exploration, the Museum transformed the Gare Maritime de Cherbourg, a building heavily bombed during the Second World War on a strategic battle site, into one of the country’s most visited regional institutions.

A nuclear military submarine is inserted discretely in a dry dock open to the public and presented as it would have been at the time of its retirement. Embedded 10 meter below sea level, the submarine is discretely integrated, almost invisible, in the skyline of the City of Cherbourg.

Visitors to the site are able to engage with the often-confronting violence witnessed by the site, within a calm and spectacular architectural landscape, which in itself contributes to reflection about the themes of war, conflict and suffering and the blessings of peace.