Capturing the castle

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 1997

In north-west Normandy, at truly Ruskinian row has been boiling steadily over Bruno Decaris' discreetly modern and minimalist additions to the ruins of the medieval castle at Falaise, a superb example of medieval military architecture. In the absence of records, Decaris' attempt to restore dignity, to create a living impression of the original volumes, has been couched abstractly in modern materials. The castle has floating Teflon fabric roofs designed by Peter Rice, glass floors, metal detailing and a new concrete and steel barbican. Normandy is staunchly conservative and Decaris' work has had to be defended against traditionalists.

The town was the scene of the 1944 battle of the Falaise Gap, and has been largely rebuilt. But it is dominated by the castle, built between the tenth and thirteenth centuries by the Dukes of Normandy. When completed, the castle consisted of a rare complex of two rectangular keeps and circular tower. On the north side, it rose from the sheer cliffs (falaises) of a rocky spur; ont the west it was linked to a smaller keep and on the south, to a 35m high cylindrical tower surmounted by machicolations, added in the thirteen century.

The castle withstood the vicissitudes of the Hundred Years War and seemed impregnable, until Henri IV proved otherwise in 1589. It was then abandoned until designated a Monument Historique in 1840. On the orders of Napoleon III in 1863 the two keeps were rescued from collapse, and crudely restored. Decaris found Falaise a sad patched-up shell, without floors and roofs, eloquent of desolation rather than ruinous romance. He wanted to express the castle's importance as fortress and dwelling.

Peter Rice's delicate tensile roofs, of white fabric stretched over metal frames, hover 400mm over the walls of the two keeps. A perimeter beam is fixed to the top of the walls, leaving a glazed gap. Leaded ridges provide ballast, and the structures are further anchored at three points by metal cable stays running 30m down the outside of the ancient masonry to be fixed to the rock.

Rice's structural geometries were informed by Decaris' investigations into the geometry of the great Norman keep. He found a single module of 3.3m square repeated on plan six times down the length, and five times across the width; similarly repeated in elevation, compound divisions of the module were present in smaller elements. Research revealed the same module governing the design of the tower built over a century later than the keep. Rice's structures are the abstract traces of medieval ordering geometry.

The covering has brought to life the interior of the great keep. Entering the main hall high above the ground through the Norman doorway, you find yourself on a glass floor, conscious of the enormous volume of space above and below down to the rock, enclosed by stone walls pierced by windows with deep reveals.

Decaris' scheme includes stone repairs, reconstructing staircases, installing electricity and heating. He evades pastiche by using modern materials, for instance windows have etched glass or are screened with metal gauze. Now you can ascend the circular tower which has a new parapet to hide visitors' heads. Instead, new openings allow views over the Normandy landscape and metal grilles between the machicolations give vertiginous glimpses of the ground some 35m below.

Because of the kerfuffle Decaris has provoked - the new barbican has proved especially provocative - work has not been completed. A steel drawbridge has yet to be finished, and there is tidying up to be done. The Mayor of Falaise had wanted the castle to be as conspicuous an architectural exercise as 'the pyramid at the Louvre'. Decaris seems to have bravely satisfied his brief.