Projectiles, France

Airborne Museum, Sainte-Mère-Église

A pavilion for the Waco glider

In Sainte-Mère-Église, one of the first landing sites on D-Day in Normandy, the new exhibition pavilion at the Airborne Museum serves as a protective shell for a highly sensitive technical relic: an original Waco CG-4 cargo glider. The fragile, motorless aircraft made of plywood, metal and textile covering transported soldiers and material as part of airborne operations. Today, the preserved exhibit needs an architectural shelter that both protects it and ensures people can see it.

unico Porte and thermfix light Facciate - Airborne Museum, Sainte-Mère-Église

Full-surface opening of the central exhibition space with the forster thermfix light facade system. Photos: Antoine Cardi

Conceived as a museum park, the Airborne Museum combines exhibition and open space to create a coherent landscape of remembrance. The new pavilion designed by Projectiles picks up the thread of this aspiration architecturally and positions itself as an independent structure within the park area.

The architectural idea is based on a consistent, full-surface opening. Six-metre-high glass surfaces provide the facade with structure across its entire height. The glazing is mirrored to the outside, reflecting the park landscape, and offering wide views of the museum park from the inside. Horizontal dividers were deliberately avoided.

The entrance doors with the thermally insulated profile system forster unico blend seamlessly into the glass facade. Photos: Forster Profile Systems

For the glass facade measuring around 200 square metres, the thermally insulated forster thermfix light facade with attachment profiles was further developed on a project-specific basis. The new version with a face width of 80 millimetres allows glass formats of up to 6 × 2 metres without additional truss elements.

The 3.50-metre-high entrance doors with the thermally insulated profile system forster unico blend seamlessly into the glass facade of the foyer and meet the requirements for heat insulation and robustness in museum operations. As a result, the building’s clear cubic form with its consistent interplay of opaque and mirrored facade areas remains legible as a coherent whole.