Project - Moatti and Rivière

Here, the archi­tecture is itself an edu­ca­tional content and becomes an integral part of the present­ation of the eco­nomic themes and of the dif­ferent sequences of the museo­graphic circuit. The context has a guiding role. The Defrasse Hall becomes the dis­tri­bution hub of the exhib­ition tour. Everything tours around this Hall. It main­tains its identity as a sym­bolic central and axial space.

Reflec­tions and light from the images are the two con­tem­porary and imma­terial ele­ments. The interior of the “World Dome” reflects the entire place and merges with the sur­rounding sceno­graphic elements.

The safe room, where valuable objects and family treasures used to be stored, is the ideal place to dis­cover and under­stand the Banque de France’s his­torical her­itage: Its col­lection of money and mon­etary instruments.

The Hôtel Gaillard is sep­arated from the Banque de France extension by two breaches. One is a prom­enade trav­elling across the per­manent exhib­ition; the second enables to redis­cover the “for­gotten” facade in the courtyard of the Hôtel Gaillard and opens onto the safe room.

In the ped­ago­gical tour, the project bestows a central place to the present­ation of the “virtual” to “carry” the pro­posed exper­i­ences. The image – most often from our ordinary visual culture – is the primary material. All exper­i­ences and all attrac­tions are based on manip­u­la­tions and inter­ac­tions with images that deal with highly tan­gible ques­tions. The levels of scale and the image immersion fully play their role as for instance in the install­ation of the “circuit” where the visitor is plunged into the heart of the rep­res­ent­ation and becomes one of its actors.

Eco­nomics is also expressed in the com­plexity of the real world. Sub­jective, per­sonal, psy­cho­lo­gical even emo­tional real­ities: we have sought to promote a sens­itive or even emo­tional rela­tionship with this intimacy. To re-​​create the “Romanesque truth” of Eco­nomics and renew the museo­graphic lan­guage, we took inspir­ation from the games, exchange paths and social­isation systems that young people are familiar with.