“In 2024, Villa Noailles explores the influence of the sea on architecture by dedicating a monographic exhibition to Jacques Rougerie, a globally renowned French architect, academician, and specialist in marine, underwater, and coastal habitats. Life began underwater 3.8 billion years ago, and Jacques Rougerie invites us to return to it. Seas and oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface. Jacques Rougerie identifies himself as a ‘Mérien,’ in contrast to the term ‘terrestrial,’ thus shifting architecture from Earth’s gravity to Archimedes’ buoyancy. Since the early 1970s, this persevering oceanographer architect has been designing underwater habitats in collaboration with oceanographers, biologists, and engineers, grounded in solid scientific explorations – not utopia but anticipation.

His research, exploring the similarities between life and technologies in the worlds of space and underwater, leads him to design architectures dedicated to space and the Moon. Jacques Rougerie personally tests the prototypes of underwater habitats, using every imaginable means. He lives with and under the sea, even participating in a world record by spending 71 days in an underwater habitat in the USA in 1992. The sea is his way of life, and he aims to share it.

The exhibition features numerous original drawings from Jacques Rougerie’s personal archives, some presented for the first time, and a collection of his models, including one of an underwater village borrowed from the Centre Pompidou’s collections. Additionally, the underwater habitat Aquabulle, experimented with numerous times in the Mediterranean, especially off the coast of Hyères, is displayed on the forecourt of Villa Noailles.” — Villa Noailles

Exhibition was curated by MBL Architects, Benjamin Lafore, Sébastien Martinez-Barat, Florian Jomain, Nicolas Boulben.

Images courtesy Villa Noailles.