Fondation Bel

Maison de la Vache Qui Rit

Cultural institutions
Lons-le-Saunier
Carta - Reichen et Robert Associates - Fondation Bel

Building the Maison de la Vache qui Rit, which will take a cultural, playful approach to the cheese brand’s heritage. The program comprises exhibition spaces, play spaces for children, and a bar and shop.

Our primary desire as architects was to give La Vache Qui Rit a space to complement the image it bears and the values the brand embodies, as well as a building representative of the region that has been home to its birth and later prosperity.
By designing a volume suspended above a continuous garden, we suggest an imaginative world, and by expressing it in the form of a box whose architecture is linked to its construction technique and to the use of larch as a material, we give it an identity.
This box, complemented by a transparent ground floor and a vertical garden under the glass-roofed hall, invites visitors to discover the place.

The itinerary and the interior-exterior views, often based on the diagonals of the spaces, cause them to appear larger than they are, but they remain on an intimate and domestic scale.
Thus discovery of the architectural and museographical itinerary is “in the box” and “in the space between”: in the dialogue between the existing building and the contemporary extension, between interior and exterior, between transparencies and opacities, between light and shadow.
We wanted the visitor to experience multiple sensations while maintaining a simplicity and directness, so that each visitor feels welcome in the “house”.

Marc Warnery


Delivery : 2009

Complete commission

Project Owner
Fromageries BEL

Project Supervision
Reichen et Robert & Associés

Lead architect, project office and quality assurance: Alain Just
Fluides et électricité: INEX
Engineering and structures: EVP
Acoustics, audiovisual: ALTIA
Scenographic architects: Arc en scène
Construction economist: Lucigny Talhouet et Associés
Landscaping: RB&Cie

Area
2,400 m² net floor area
1,200 m² created area
1,200 m² renovated area
2,300 m² exterior spaces

Environmental performance
above RT 2005 (thermal regulation)

Photographer
Persona production

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