Ambrussum Oppidum Museum · Villetelle · Participatory model

Ambrussum

The remains are a few metres away, beside the Via Domitia. The model shows the way station as it once stood — and visitors are the ones who built it.

400builders

Client: Ambrussum Museum
Sector: Museum · heritage
Location: Villetelle, France
Period: Oct 2025 → Feb 2026
Duration: 2 × 2 weeks of workshops
Pieces: 45,000
Area: 10 m²
Built: With the public · 400 participants

The brief

Closing the gap between ruin and building.

A Roman way station today means foundations, thresholds and the first courses of walls. Visitors see a ground plan and have to rebuild the rest in their heads — something archaeologists do without thinking and the general public does not do at all.

The museum wanted an object showing the building upright, next to the remains, allowing direct comparison: here is what survives, here is what it was.

What we built

A model built by the people who come to see it.

We built the whole scene in bricks: the way station and its enclosure, the courtyards, the lodgings, the stables, the paved road with its porticoes and the arched bridge carrying it onward. Ten square metres, forty-five thousand pieces, and a palette matched to the real materials — river pebbles for the roadway, terracotta for the roofs.

But the model did not arrive finished. It was assembled on site across two school-holiday periods, in autumn and then in February, by visitors themselves, guided by our digital plans and supported by our hosts. Four hundred people laid pieces on it.

That changes the nature of the visit: you don't come to see a model, you come to see the one you helped build. Many families returned between sessions to check how far the build had got.

Group of participants around the build table during a workshop — The open workshops, during school holidays.

Participant laying pieces on the model while following a plan — Each builder works on one zone, plan in hand.

The paved road in grey bricks, lined with porticoes and tiled roofs — The paved Via Domitia and its porticoes.

Young participant checking the plan on a tablet in front of the arched brick bridge — The arched bridge, built from the digital plan.

Detail of the way station's inner courtyard with its hearth and figures — The inner courtyard and its outbuildings.

Crate of orange roof tiles and build plan on the workshop table — Forty-five thousand pieces, sorted before laying.

Overhead view of the build table: the printed plan, trays of pieces and participants' hands — The plan in the middle, the trays around it: the build table from above.

Hands reaching into a tray of beige and brown tiles and plates — Finding the right tile just before laying it. Sorting is what makes it fast.

Hands assembling a colonnade in grey bricks — A portico built column by column.

Hands assembling greenery from green bricks — The planting is built too, piece by piece.

A hand above a tray of bricks sorted by colour — Forty-five thousand pieces, sorted by colour before the workshop.

The outcome

Four hundred builders, and a model that stays on site.

Both workshop runs filled up. The finished model stayed at the museum, metres from the archaeological site it explains, and four hundred people can now point to the piece they laid themselves.

More of our work

A similar project?

You have a site where only the ground plan survives.

A villa, a fort, a mill, an abbey: if your visitors have to imagine the building, a model will spare them the effort — and your workshops will do the rest.

Start a project

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Participatory modelDesigned by us, built with your audience