Gilles Marty: The Most Beautiful Square Meters Are Those We Do Not Build. Tuning Architecture Like a Musical Instrument

He designed the New Generation Museum in the grounds of the Baroque chateau and is now completing the transformation of a former convent into the Vysočina Cultural and Creative Centre – Hub 800. At this year’s KoresponDance Festival, he will present the book – an architectural manifesto – in the Talk Next discussion series. An excerpt appears in the interview below.

Beyond Žďár, Marty has worked on exceptional sites such as the historic fortified city of Carcassonne and a pilgrimage centre in Lourdes. What connects these remarkable places? An interdisciplinary approach he describes as archaeological, musical and even culinary. And when he studies the flow of spaces, his thinking moves into choreographic territory…

You previously worked on the New Generation Museum here in Žďár. How does the Cultural and Creative Centre build on that earlier project, and what story connects the two buildings across time?

We find ourselves in two very different contexts. The museum is housed in a relatively dark former industrial building, and its layout follows a tightly defined visitor route shaped by the museographic design of two exhibitions – one devoted to the Cistercians and the other to the Baroque. By contrast, the Cultural and Creative Centre is in a spacious Baroque building filled with light. This makes it far more open and flexible in both its functional programme and in the relationships between the individual spaces.

The connection between the two projects can nevertheless be defined as follows: firstly, in both cases I was concerned with exploring movement in the sense of a fluid sequencing of spaces, allowing visitors and audiences to move through them naturally. I call this an “architectural spatial continuum”.

Secondly, in both buildings the architectural programme – that is, the uses the building was intended to accommodate – had to adapt to the very specific layouts and conditions of the historic spaces to ensure that each element of the programme had to respond to the historic space accommodating it – its geometry, form, proportions, materials and light.

The third connection is the work with light and colour. In the museum, the light is deliberately artificial, allowing the objects installed in the exhibitions to stand out. In the creative centre, by contrast, it is as natural as possible, letting the space itself vibrate with life.

And finally, they are all connected by the fact that I tried to take the dreams of my clients, Marie and Konstantin Kinsky, very seriously and attune myself to their expectations. In the case of the museum, this means transmission and continuity, and in the case of the creative centre, creation itself. It always unfolds in a spirit of sharing and mutual enrichment across disciplines, historical periods and audiences from different generations.

You often describe your approach as archaeological. What does that mean in practical terms? What are the key strategic, pre-architectural questions you ask at the very beginning of a project? And how do you work with the fact that archaeological findings can sometimes complicate or even obstruct construction?

I understand archaeology from several angles: first and foremost as a scientific discipline that seeks to reconstruct wholes from fragments and remnants – to grasp them and give them meaning. Giving things meaning always begins with thorough investigation, aimed at revealing what lies beneath the deceptive surface of things.

I also see it as a form of storytelling directly linking the past with our present. It encourages us not to imagine the future as a predetermined path, but as a field of possibilities that must be explored and shaped, because archaeology clearly shows us that nothing is immutable.

And finally, it is a way of paying extraordinary attention to the soil beneath our feet. This and the atmosphere are undoubtedly the most precious things we must protect and care for if we want to live well on this planet: we must protect historic places and avoid destroying landscapes and the living world.

For me, these three visions define how I inhabit the role of architect. I never see archaeology and archaeological findings as obstacles. On the contrary, they are a wonderful opportunity to reinforce the overall meaning of an architectural project.

FROM Gilles’s NEW BOOK: The Most Beautiful Square Meters Are Those We Do Not Build

You compare architecture to music –⁠ tuning, rhythm and silence. How do you work with this metaphor as an actual design tool, not just a metaphor? How do you test whether a structure is well tuned?

This is precisely the theme addressed in this excerpt from my book:

“Yet the profession closest to my heart is that of a musician. I read scores, I compose, I interpret and I often improvise. I am always drawn more to effects, timbre, rhythm and the melody of things rather than to their outward appearance. I prefer the quiet of subtle, fragile architectural sensations to the restlessness of overly loud forms. Nothing moves me more than the softness of a garden after rain, the smoothness of green marble in the shade of a crypt, or the vivid reflection of stained glass cast onto the worn stone of a church.

For me, the tuning ritual is the most moving moment of a concert, as it is when the orchestra tunes itself in a kind of dizzying confusion that announces the silence preceding the actual work. I believe that the entire profession of an architect is contained in this moment of extreme attunement – when the task is to extract from the vastness of a place the fragments of sensation and transform them into a sensitive material that will come alive in space, light and time…

As a teenager, I wanted to become a maker of stringed instruments. When I eventually became an architect, I had no idea that these two professions would one day converge into one. We often underestimate the detours life offers us, and we understand the logic of the path we have taken only in retrospect. It was only later that I realised that all my projects have been conceived as musical instruments.

I shape them in my mind, and before they even exist, I imagine their sound in the very place itself. I give them their timbre through the choice of materials and design their forms according to the sensations they will evoke under the influence of the changing sky, the path of the sun, the movement of clouds and the hues of the seasons. I seek resonance with the place, a partnership with the landscape. The instrument gradually takes shape and I tune it to the place until it sounds right. I adjust its proportions and tighten its lines in the landscape until everything resonates, and in every detail I hunt down even the slightest false note that might disturb the harmony of the whole. I do not identify with my buildings; once they are completed, they play their own music.

Mies van der Rohe used to say that a good architect must have ‘an incredible eye.’ One could add that they must also possess an ‘exceptionally sensitive ear’. Over the years, I have come to understand that if we take the time to listen, places and landscapes play magnificent scores. Even when they seem silent, each in fact has its own music – grand or discreet, depending on the circumstances.”

You’ve mentioned that light (see also Pavla Beranová: Light and Exhibition Space) and human experience precede architecture itself. How did you think about light in a building devoted to the performing arts, especially when the artists themselves are responsible for its lighting design?

In the creative centre, natural light plays a central role in how we experience places and in how spaces and forms are defined. I never design anything that has not been thought through in relation to light. In a certain sense, form for me is the result of light, not the other way around.

You were present here in Žďár through a residency. What did you actually do during that time, and what did you learn that you did not know before this project?

During my residency in Žďár, I allowed myself the time to pause – to take one last break in a place so favourable to meditation and dreaming – before completing the final version of my book’s manuscript. I sent it to my editor directly from Žďár on the last day before returning to France. It was the deadline she had set for me, and I already knew that my stay in Žďár would mark the culmination of ten years of work and writing.

Více o Gillesovi Martym na INCA Architects.

Martin Maryška, PhD is a cultural manager, aesthetics scholar, and DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) therapist and trainer. In his interdisciplinary practice, he connects contemporary dance and psychology with visual art and graphic design, bringing artistic practice into dialogue with its aesthetic and critical reflection. Alongside his long-standing focus on dance in gallery settings, he has for many years explored visual dramaturgy through theatre posters. His doctoral research at the Department of Aesthetics, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University (2021) focused on theatricality and performativity in the context of theatre, building on his earlier studies in aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University and in theatre management at JAMU.

Talk Next

Books in Practice, Questions in Motion

At KoresponDance 2026, Talk Next is a discussion-based format that brings together authors from architecture, lighting design, dance and new circus. Guided by shared curiosity, it opens their books through practice and discussion, creating a space for exchange with both professional and general audiences. Talk Next is also part of the emerging Hub 800 Library, which is based on Marie Kinsky’s book collection and supported by AMU Press (NAMU), JAMU Publishing House, Ostružina and Éditions Hermann.

Saturday 18 July, 10:30 | Sádky – tent (web)

• Secretly Alive: Embodied Perspectives on Dance Improvisation | Mirka Eliášová a Mish Rais
• Dance – Actividary | Zden Brungot Svíteková
• Orbis cirkus | Ondřej Cihlář

Sunday 19 July, 10:30 | Sádky – tent (web)

• The Most Beautiful Metres Are Those We Do Not Build | Gilles Marty
• Light and the Exhibition Space | Pavla Beranová