Lugdu'Briques

Making a vanished city tangible.

The Gallo-Roman museum in Lyon holds the remains of a capital of Roman Gaul of which only a theatre and an odeon stand in the open air. The rest — the streets, the baths, the insulae, the forum — survives only in archaeological surveys and in the minds of those who can read them.

The team wanted something able to rebuild the whole for family audiences, without a screen or a headset. Something you look at closely, walk around, and point out to your children.

Nine months, a million pieces, an open build.

We rebuilt the ancient quarter across twenty-three square metres: the theatre and the odeon, the baths, the forum, the colonnaded streets and the insulae. Every building was validated against archaeological surveys and the museum's own publications, in dialogue with the research team — the model had to hold up in front of an archaeologist as much as in front of a six-year-old.

Digital design came first: volumes, layout and palette were settled before a single piece was laid. Sorting, sourcing and assembly took nine months in the workshop.

Part of the build was opened to the public for the whole run of the exhibition. A thousand visitors laid pieces on the very model they had come to look at, and left knowing which part was theirs.