Manege - Caserne Fonck - architect Daniel Dethier

Manege - Caserne Fonck
Among the sober and functional buildings built in the 1830s to redesign a badly damaged monastery for military use, the Caserne Fonck manege has a special heritage value. The riding school (built in 1837) shows the extent of the regiment's activities. The enormous brick facade is divided into registers and bordered by a simple decor. The quality of the structure comes from the inside out. The military engineers demonstrated their technical prowess by covering a 1,700 square meter space with a wooden frame that rests entirely on the exterior walls, without any intermediate support. Designed according to a model invented by Colonel Emy, who was professor of fortifications at the military academy of Saint-Cyr, the roof structure consists of trusses of curved and composite beams.

After the army withdrew, the Caserne Fonck was sold in 1998. In 2009 architect Daniel Dethier was commissioned for the restoration and conversion of the former riding school into a performance and event space, storage spaces, offices, technical areas and loading zones.

For the restauration all extensions were demolished, only the 1935 extension added to the northern facade was retained to separate access to the building and to provide space for changing rooms, a reception area, offices and a multi-purpose room. The single volume added is discreet: at the back of the manege was built a very contemporary looking structure to house the boiler room, ventilation unit, high and low voltage cabins, a repair shop, a landscape shop and access to the basement level .

Architect Daniel Dethier: "Our efforts were aimed at preserving the grandeur of the building by opening up the interior space as much as possible. We also took care to preserve the traces of time". The elegance of certain elements confirms this approach; you can see it in the ironwork on the large sliding exterior gates. All mechanical elements are hidden or movable. “One of the most exciting ideas of the project was to dig and create a large underground storage space for stage equipment, which can be easily moved with a stage lift. It is a huge “toolbox”, where everything has its place.”