The Keroman submarine bunkers are unique historical structures carrying with them the memory of two phases of military use, firstly by the Nazis (the original builders) and then by the French navy. The form of the buildings was determined by the support functions of the German U-boat fleet and in general the structures are unsuitable for other forms of occupancy.

main plan

The required brief divides into two categories of uses, those which match to the current conditions of the bunkers and can easily and usefully take advantage of the buildings as they exist now, and those which require heat, natural light and dry conditions, for which the bunkers provide very badly. The brief appears to conclude that the bunker buildings should remain. One aspect of the argument about retention must be made on pragmatic and economic grounds. But these structures also have a symbolic value which is more subjective and unquantifiable. They speak powerfully about a particular period in history. To appropriate and re-colonise the structures which caused the destruction of so much of the fabric of the town is a profound gesture. If they are to be retained, then the monumentality of the main bunker structures should not be disguised. Their presence should be celebrated and their condition as big objects in the town's landscape should not be denied. But equally they should not be preserved un-touched. The handing over of these buildings and spaces into the public life of the town must be linked to a profound material and spatial transformation. They must be marked as something new.

"The act of cutting through from one space to another produces a certain complexity involving depth perception. Aspects of stratification probably interest me more than the unexpected views which are generated by the removals - not the surface but the thin edge, the severed surface that reveals the autobiographical process of it's own making." " .... what the cutting's done is to make the space more articulated, but the identity of the building as a place, as an object, is strongly preserved, enhanced."

Gordon Matta-Clark - Splitting