Human Rights Museum.

Le Havre, France

Awards: Honorable Mention - Brise-Vent Havre International Design Competition

How can architecture make space for a difficult history?

This proposal for Le Havre approaches the city's connection to the transatlantic slave trade through the transformation of a waterfront windbreak. The project reads the existing concrete wall as a metaphor for the weight of oppression, then introduces a light, translucent membrane alongside it. Their encounter becomes the starting point for a museum concerned with memory, liberation, and reflection.

View from a waterfront plaza toward a long concrete wall with translucent curved membranes extending over the museum entrance — Human Rights Museum / Approaching the wall
The new membrane reaches out toward the plaza while the concrete remains visible behind it. The entrance brings the two contrasting elements into the same view.

01 / Making memory visible

Begin with what the project asks us to remember.

The portfolio frames the museum as a response to the relationship between urban prosperity and histories of exploitation. Its conceptual drawing places the city above a ship carrying enslaved people, making that relationship explicit. A second drawing interrupts a field of repeated words with an opening. Together, these images establish the proposal's symbolic language before it takes architectural form.

Conceptual drawings juxtaposing a city above a slave ship and an opening through a field of the repeated word oppression — Concept / Giving the argument a form
These are interpretive drawings: the ship connects the city to the history addressed by the project, while the opening introduces the idea of disrupting a seemingly continuous barrier.

The contrast is both material and symbolic.

02 / Weight and lightness

Let a new material change how the wall is read.

The intervention sets a lightweight membrane against the mass of the existing concrete. In the project's reading, the wall carries weight and permanence, while the translucent surface suggests the possibility—and fragility—of liberation. Curved surfaces extend from the linear building toward the waterfront plaza. The proposal uses this encounter to give the existing structure a new role as part of a place for public remembrance.

Waterfront axonometric showing the long windbreak, its repeated supports, curved membrane surfaces, plaza, and adjacent docks — The intervention / A curved surface against a linear wall
The axonometric places the intervention within the harbour setting. The repeated structure of the wall and the outward sweep of the new surfaces remain distinct and legible.

03 / A route through memory

Turn the encounter into a sequence of spaces.

The plans translate the conceptual contrast into a museum arrangement. The ground floor brings the plaza toward the entrance and an immersive space, with exhibition and multimedia rooms distributed along the wall. The upper level continues the linear exhibition sequence. Read together, the plans show how the curved intervention changes the approach to a building whose existing structure establishes a strong longitudinal order.

Ground-floor museum plan with a curved plaza and entrance, immersive space, linear exhibition areas, multimedia rooms, auditorium, and waterfront piers — Ground floor / From the plaza into the museum
The approach converges on the curved entrance before joining the long building. The programme key distinguishes exhibition and multimedia spaces from the museum's supporting facilities.

Second-floor plan showing exhibition spaces arranged along the wall and the curved membrane intervention around the central connection — Upper level / Continuing along the wall
The upper plan retains the building's linear rhythm. The curved geometry marks a change within that sequence rather than replacing its underlying order.

04 / Space for reflection

Bring the argument back to a person's experience.

Inside the proposal, light filters through the membrane beside the heavier existing structure. A curved walkway brings the relationship to the scale of a visitor, while the waterfront view places the museum back in its wider setting. These perspectives explore an atmosphere for reflection, carrying the project's material contrast from the scale of the wall to the experience of moving beside it.

Interior perspective of a visitor on a curved walkway between a translucent membrane and the museum wall, with light filtering through the surface — Beside the membrane / Light and movement
The visitor encounters the membrane at close range. Its filtered light and visible supports give the symbolic contrast a spatial presence.

View across the water toward a glazed museum volume with the long concrete wall behind it — At the waterfront / A place within the harbour
Seen across the water, the museum remains connected to its setting. The new volume offers another perspective on the relationship between the intervention and the wall.

Memory / Material / Reflection

Make the past part of the encounter.

The proposal uses the meeting of concrete and membrane to hold a difficult history within public space. Its architectural ambition is to offer a setting in which remembrance and reflection can take place.

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Location: Le Havre, France
Studio: Terraviva Brise-Vent Havre competition
Collaboration: Team work with Yunzhao Wei, Ruoxi Li
Recognition: Honorable Mention - Brise-Vent Havre International Design Competition

Next projectDF 2021: Air Filled Membrane Structure Room Sprayed by Mechanical Arm.