“Asile Flottant” is the project name of a ship that Le Corbusier repaired a 70 m long concrete ark as a refuge at the request of The Salvation Army in 1929.It has been used for more than 60 years, but since 2006 it has been transferred to the revitalization company “Association Louise Catherin” which is the current administrator, and the restoration project to cultural facilities has started.Endo Shuhei Architect Institute was invited to design a temporary shelter for Building and Construction, in 2006, restoration work. Since this, we have participated for restoration projects over 10 years. This exhibition aims to introduce to more Japanese people for restoration projects.
There are few people who know “Asile Flottant”, and precious materials of the time that keeping by the Le Corbusier Foundation are limited.Meanwhile, Asile Flottant, which continues to float on The Seine for nearly 100 years, has a complex background.Therefore, the exhibition contents were planed to all visitors can understand and up to their history and importance by looking at the exhibition.Also, we would like to make the exhibition of Asile Flottant to be able to seen with a sense of spatial by visitors.
The main exhibits are drawings, photographs, models, and movies. Drawings and photographs of the time by the Le Corbusier Foundation were compiled in five panels for each of the five themes and showed from the planning stage to the state of use after the construction.In addition, in the exhibition of 1: 5 model made of polystyrene foam (total length of about 14 m, width of about 2 m, height of about 1 m), it is partially possible to look inside. There are pillars painted blue and models of beds that were installed at the time were arranged. (This “blue” is thought to be same of it painted at the time of completion.)Besides this, by playing the video that be shot at the site, it is an exhibition that visitors can feel the movement of the water sound, fluctuation, light that is unique to the floating boat that is not found in the ground.
To this exhibition, there were about 1,800 visitors (totaling 4 venues). About the Tokyo Exhibition, introductory articles were published by seven newspaper companies including The Asahi Shimbun and The Mainichi Newspaper.Also at SNS, many positive reactions have been posted from people who visited the exhibition.There are also opinions that wish to organize further traveling exhibitions from throughout the country. It was found from the result that many people are interested in “Asile Flottant” and are considered to be interested in its importance.Especially there were about 1000 visitors in the Tokyo exhibition held on about 2 weeks, I felt the high interest of people.During the exhibition, Architectural Design Association of Nippon (ADAN) did a crowdfunding for aimed at gathering restoration expenses, and was achieved in a manner exceeding the target amount within the period.
Based on the above, it seems that the objective has been sufficiently achieved.