A huge "urban living room" forms the heart of the looping MÉCA cultural hub, which BIG and FREAKS have completed beside the River Garonne in Bordeaux, France.
Named MÉCA, an acronym for Maison de l?Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, the 18,000-square-metre centre contains a media library, performance space and art gallery in a bid to establish the city as "the epicentre for culture".

It was designed by BIG and FREAKS to be an extrusion of the city's promenade, blurring the boundary between the building and public space, that people can walk through and engage with it.
"OARA, ALCA and FRAC have already arrived when the building completed ? and now that MÉCA has opened, the fourth and final element is here: the city and the citizens of Bordeaux," said Bjarke Ingels, BIG's founding partner and creative director.
"Within this new urban room, we have already seen the arrival of the first skateboarders, the first romantic couple sharing a bottle of Bordeaux on the steps, and the first demonstration on the sloping promenade," Ingels continued.
"So consider MÉCA's urban room as a blank canvas, or rather an empty frame, for the Bordelais to fill it with their ideas, their creativity, their culture, and to make it their own."

BIG and FREAKS first revealed the design for MÉCA in 2012, as part of the Bordeaux riverfront's revival. It is positioned on the site of a former slaughterhouse between a series of other ...