Jacques Rougerie is passionated by architecture and oceanography and follows the quote of Jules Verne “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real” since 30 years. Jacques Rougerie is our 21st century Capitain Nemo. His work is multidisciplinary and smartly mix sciences, design and architecture. Hard defender of the environment, he is looking for a way to integrate human’s way of life into the nature system. Let’s discover together his new innovative concepts and his revolutionary projects to give to the new generations a new vision of design.
Nature is the inspiration …
Forms, colours, but also the technologies of the nature inspire Jacques Rougerie. Thanks to its million of years of experience, nature had develop technologies that humans can’t even imagine. This nature and its technologies are the inspiration of Rougerie.
By takin the evolution of the nature as a source of inspiration, it is possible to create what we call a biomimetics design, that copy the nature without destroying it. It is the guideline of Jacques Rougerie. It is the futur of design. Instead of detroying our initial environment we will integrate it and take advantage of all its potential. The technologies of the nature are more develop than ours, let’s copy them. Nature don’t produce trash but function in cycle, let’s function in cycles too. It is as easy as that.
Since the creation of his agency, 30 years ago, Jacques Rougerie tryed to combine his three biggest passions : new technologies, architecture and oceanography. We can see it on his creations that are mainly museums, subaquatic laboratories or underwater habitations. I am thinking inter alia about the underwater house SeaSpace or the laboratory SeaOrbiter that I’ll detail later on this article.
His biggest projects…
The Cité of Mériens
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Cité des Mériens by Jacques Rougerie
With such a science fiction name, the Cité of Mériens couldn’t be imaginated by someone else than Jacques Rougerie. This huge structure is a university with the form of a huge manta ray of 900 meters long and 500 meters large. The objective is to welcome scientists, teachers and students inside for long duration trips with the aim of studying the deeps of our oceans. The objective of the ship is to act like a port from which one the Sea Orbiters or others vessels (until 90m long) could leave to explore the sea. Entirely autonomous, the ship will not have any impact on the environment and allow us to know better the underwater area.
The under water house SeaSpace
SeaSpace by Jacques Rougerie
SeaSpace is one of those crazy projects imaginate in 2008 by the genius mind of Jacques Rougerie. SeaSpace is an underwater house and a subaquatic laboratory entirely autonomous. The objective of SeaSpace is to train astronauts to get use of the space conditions for lunar or marsian expeditions. Their journey inside will during between 3 and 6 months under water. The project is to build a huge aluminium structure measuring 27 meters large for 9 meters long that can welcome 8 aquanauts-astronauts, suspended between 12 and 100 meters in the deepness of the sea. SeaSpace is composed by an underwater life base, underwater garages and a renewable energies plateforme.
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SeaOrbiter Seaship
SeaOrbiter by Jacques Rougerie
This project is probably the most spectacular Jacques Rougerie created. It is answering the problematic of the knowledge of our oceans. Today, human knows more about space than about the species and technologies of the seas. As the International Spacial Station, SeaOrbiter will welcome scientifics, students or teachers teams that will analyze the underwater ecosystem 24 hours a day, without perturbating their way of life. The station will measure 50 meters high for 24 meters large, welcome 18 persons and be completely autonomous as well. Some courses and experiences will be also realized on board and shared in direct on the social medias.
Some images of the world of tomorow by Jacques Rougerie…
Eco museum Fare Natura – Tahiti
Attraction park Atlantis – Abu Dhabi
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A water city – Monaco
A city in fusion with its environment – Longchi Valley (China)
Cultural exhibition center – Kochi (India)
A next generation already prepared…
Jacques Rougerie is a visionnary in his art and the next generation followed him. Sustainable architecture is a major environmental issue for our cities in the futur and we can notice that designers have a lot of creativity to answer those environmental questions.
Paik Nam June Media Bridge – South Korea
South Korean know already since a long time how to deal with sustainable design. For them a bridge isn’t only a bridge but it is also a commercial center, a library, a conference room and more. The Paik Nam June Media Bridge will measure 1080 meters long and link the two sides of the Han river in Séoul. The huge structure will obviously be feed in energy by solar panels on its roof.
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Supertree Grove – Singapour
The super trees of Singapour already have an established reputation. The huge structures go up 25 to 50 meters above the floor and were imaginated by Garden by the bay, an independant organisation in charge of the development and the management of the asiatic gardens. The objective of the organisation is not to adapt the garden to the house but to adapt the house to the garden.
Hydrogenase – Shanghai
Does this picture make you think about Avatar? Yes? Me too! Hydrogenase is a huge project coming from the crazy mind of the french-belgium architect Vincent Callebaut. Those structures welcome seaweed farms and scientific laboratories. They are measuring 480 meters of high and 180 meters of large for 350 000 square meters. As all the other structures we saw before, it is autonomous and inspire its design from our beautiful nature.
The civilisation museum of Saint Paul – La Réunion
Created by the architect studio XTU, the civilization museum of Saint-Paul is perfectly integrated to its environment. Created in 2000 by two french Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Desmazieres, the agency XTU is specialized in environmental research adapted to residential and cultural buildings. Their portfolio count already several other museums such as the Jeongkok Museum in South Korea or the Cité du vin in Bordeaux.
Jacques Rougerie is a visionnary in his domain and deserve all the attention of the architectural world. His work inspired a tremendous number of architects and we can consider that his vision of design is the one of the design of tomorow.
