Millénaire de Caen

To celebrate Caen’s millennium, Mathias Courtet, as artistic director, was looking for an intervention capable of revealing a powerful fragment of the region’s history: the cooling tower of the former SMN steelworks in Colombelles.The studio imagined Le Chaudron: a luminous metal installation conceived as a 360° signal within the urban landscape. A circular line wraps around the tower, drawing the eye, marking the entrance to the city, and restoring a nocturnal presence to this monumental architecture.Metal, light and geometry enter into dialogue with the site’s industrial memory, once the beating heart of Caen’s metallurgical production.The project does not seek to conceal the building, but to activate it. It highlights its silhouette, reveals its power, and transforms this vestige into a contemporary landmark — between collective memory, public signal and luminous apparition.