Camouflage Sport Center

As an artist would paint on a canvas, Alain Bony intervened on the sportive center’s building exceeding the limits of the canvas to play on a three dimensional plane, performing a mixture of art and architecture which outreached artistic painting. From the idea of “phagocytization”, in an attempt to merge the building into the landscape, Alain Bony has intervened the entire exterior of the sportive center disposing the colours by feeling or in a spontaneous, intuitive way to give the impression of an image lost in the surroundings with such an integration that one couldn’t visually separate the architecture from its context.

The artist is convinced that colour must be one with the building and that was exactly his objective in this case. Moreover, the architect Jean Nouvel allowed him great freedom to be able to experiment and take an action as ‘‘simple” as painting the building in an unprecedented way.

Architect: Jean Nouvel

Status: Finished

Date: 1986

Location: Nîmes, France

Photo credit: Philippe Ruault