The Cultural Center of Bastia was developed within an ANRU program related to the renovation of neighborhoods in the south of Bastia, a big part of which is made of large housing schemes built in the 60s.

The achievement of the Cultural Center was the main aim of this urban renovation, a place for all made to enhance the relations and exchanges of the inhabitants through social and cultural practices. The Cultural Center, as public equipment, serves the town beyond the neighborhood limits and is therefore open to all of Bastia’s inhabitants; its role enables the neighborhood to open itself to the exterior.

The building site is dealt as a large park open onto the city of Bastia. The border fences are removed, the vegetation is preserved and developed, new spaces are designed in order to sit by the pines and eucalyptus shadows.

The project specifications demanded: “an innovative and creative place, a place of contrasts, shadows and lights, luminous and soft for the lecture spaces, dark and sonorous for the auditorium”. The answer to this demand is literal and radical.