Thomas O. Gray

coup de mistral. quel coup de mistral?

Marseilles has a history of externalised, privileged viewpoints providing extended and reciprocal gazes to and from the city; les Îles du Frioul, Château D’If, Algiers, la ville sans nom, Notre Dame de la Garde, etc …

Le Coup de Mistral is a prophesied moment when a fierce wind knocks the Madonna from her perch atop Notre Dame de la Garde; Nature topples Man. The project aims to preempt this subjugation by preparing a contingency measure.

Geographically and philosophically a way-finding device, the Madonna is the symbol of Marseilles and a good luck charm to the Marsaillais. She overlooks much of the city and the docks, but her final resting gaze – her distant true horizon – is an arid, desolate steppe landscape. Despite surface conditions, the region has a highly fertile, calciferous ground trapped beneath an impervious natural cement horizon.

In the Coussouls de Crau, wells become oases for trees, creatures and shepherds alike. 37 pools excavated beneath 37 abandoned gunpowder storage Huts provide life via electrolysis and mineral lamination to 37 slices of a replacement Madonna. A symbiosis that appeases the God(s).

The 37 Huts are serviced by an Assembly Hub – a building with workshops to produce the moulds for each Madonna slice, storage for the mould plugs, and the space and means for assembling the 37 slices upon completion. In order to maintain a highly, and specifically, skilled workforce, as well as to offset the large cost of such a grand projet, the workshops are used in the meantime to construct souvenirs, garden ornaments and other religious iconography.

If/when the prophesied coup occurs, this preemptive action facilitates the rapid (almost miraculous) resurrection of the status quo.

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