DATA SHEET
Client: Municipality of Arromanches-les-Bains
Architecture: Projectiles, architect (project manager) + scenographer
Landscape design: Emma Blanc
All trades engineering: Tpf ingéniérie
Lighting design: Abraxas concepts
Multimedia design: Lundi 8
Graphic design: Wa75
Stage equipment: Changement à vue
Acoustician: Altia
Manip: Veroliv
Preventive conservation: Aïnu
Photos: Antoine Cardi
On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed in Normandy, marking the beginning of Europe’s liberation from Nazism and Fascism. Today, the memories of that epochal event, alongside those related to Impressionism, form the region’s main tourist attraction.
To preserve its tangible and intangible heritage, the Arromanches-les-Bains Landing Museum was established at the end of World War II. From its opening on June 5, 1954, until its temporary closure in November 2022, it welcomed over 20 million visitors. In 2023, the museum reopened with a new building designed by Parisian architects Projectiles, whose professional practice, as they state, appeals to «moving landscapes, oral heritage, ancestral enigmas, the unexpected, and fragments of personal and collective history.
Beyond the concept of comfort, we are certainly driven by the pleasure that architecture can offer». In the case of Arromanches, the true protagonist is the landscape. «We worked according to the motto “Once the vestiges disappear, the museum will endure”», the architects clarify.
They add: «the main challenges of this project, which are memory, the knowledge and transmission of a shared history, as well as our duty of remembrance, beyond the disappearance of certain vestiges of the artificial port in the near future». They emphasize that the museum’s relationship with the territory is fundamental. Indeed, its unique position transforms the new museum into a kind of observatory, envisioned as part of a larger landscape system extending from east to west (from one cliff to another) and from north to south (from the marine horizon to the inhabited center). From both the plaza and the slope, all five facades of the museum are visible, contributing to the multiplicity and diversity of perspectives offered on the landscape, enhanced by the new building’s pronounced horizontality.
The outdoor spaces also contribute to this complex perceptual system. For instance, the plaza in front of the museum serves as an ideal stage for contemplating the spectacle of the tides revealing what remains of the wartime structures, while to the east, a new treed public space establishes continuity with Place du 6 Juin 1944.
Inside, the ground floor offers a continuation of the external public spaces, while on the first floor, the collections—essentially composed of maps and objects—engage with a landscape that becomes the absolute protagonist on the accessible terraced roof. The visitor journey begins from Place du 6 Juin 1944 and the waterfront. The exhibition galleries gradually open outwards, following a chronological and thematic path that leads from the outbreak of the war to liberation.
On the ground floor, visitors enter a multi-level room with a hushed atmosphere, where an introductory film contextualizes the museum’s purpose. The visit continues on the first floor, offering a direct visual connection with the marine horizon and the remnants of the temporary artificial port of Mulberry B, used for the D-Day landings. The structural grid upon which the museum is built also draws inspiration from its modularity.
A 4-meter-deep and 8-meter-high canopy surrounds the new building, resting on pre-fabricated light concrete columns that define its perimeter. Finally, a large longitudinal void (16 meters long and 4 meters wide) characterizes each interior floor, over which a large suspended walkway appears to float.
