Built in 1824 on the banks of the Garonne, the Entrepôt Lainé warehouse was used to store spices, chocolate, and vanilla. Its rigorous design, ingenious construction system, and the beauty of its masterful geometry make it an architecture of light and mass.

Built in 1824 on the banks of the Garonne, the Entrepôt Lainé warehouse was used to store spices, chocolate, and vanilla. Its rigorous design, ingenious construction system, and the beauty of its masterful geometry make it an architecture of light and mass. 

The rehabilitation of the “Entrepôt Lainé” combined two objectives, two reflections: a reflection on modern art, its context, its environment, and a reflection on creating architecture through the rehabilitation of an exceptional building. 

The adaptive-reuse project is committed to the comprehension of and deep respect for this architecture of golden limestone and warm brick. The restoration conserves the traces of the past: graffiti daubed by workers on stone walls, black grime accumulated on certain facades, measures of activity, measures of time. 

The play of horizontal and vertical planes captures a portion of space while at the same time revealing the space that contains them. A white wall sometimes fills in an arch, sometimes partially masks it, prompting the visitor to reconstruct it mentally and thus inciting a new way of looking at it. 

Here one architecture is held within and holds another in this contemporary intervention, both architectures, old and new are restored and the comprehension of each is clear.