Owner: Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN)
Architecture and interior design: Projectiles
Restoration architecture: Olivier Weets, Chief Architect of Historic Monuments
Lighting design: 8’18”
Furnishings: on design by Projectiles
Signage: Cl design
Stage equipment: Changement à vue
Acoustics: Altia
All trades design office: TPF ingéniérie
Economics of scenography: Adéquat
Architectural agency: LACAA, Scala, M-0
Structural engineering: Michel Bancon, Knippers Helbig
Photo credits: Sébastien Veronese
Commissioned by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN), the Cité internationale de la langue française was inaugurated in late 2023 by Emmanuel Macron. “A city, not a museum,” states the President of France. “A permanent path enriched with living spaces, meeting places, recreational activities, and knowledge centers. It will host training courses, workshops, residences for artists and researchers, an auditorium, and a language technology lab. Everyone should feel at home here.” The language as the body of a nation, then, is essential for expressing and defending ideas. But also for welcoming and opening up to the world, so that learning it does not become a criterion for exclusion, but rather a tool to promote coexistence.
This homage to France’s intangible heritage is housed in the Château de Villers-Cotterêts, not far from the capital. This former royal residence from the 1500s has been restored by the architects of Monuments Historiques (ACMH), with spaces designed by the Projectiles studio for architecture, scenography, interior design, and furniture design, and by 8’18” for lighting design.
“The architectural work was an act of balance between space, use, and meaning,” explains Hervé Bouttet, founding partner of Projectiles. “Our goal was to create a project entirely dedicated to visitors, to experience the language and evoke emotions. Beyond being a mediation space, it’s also a place of creation. Language is alive, and the architectural project accompanies it.”
This is exemplified by the Jeu de Paume courtyard, a porous and welcoming area. An agora from which the permanent visit path, the boutique-library, the tearoom, educational and shared workshops, temporary exhibition halls, rehearsal rooms, and artists’ studios unfold. Just above, the glass roof hosts an installation—defined by the designers as a ‘lexical sky’—composed of 89 words (chosen through participatory workshops with the local population) forming interchangeable phrases depending on the direction of reading or the lighting sequence.
Here, 8’18” has imagined the lighting design as an alphabet of light supporting a narrative. It’s also a metaphor, working with sources that create a coherent whole. Overall, the lighting design in the Cité is both scenographic and museographic, intentionally serving as a vector for understanding and emotion.
