La Piscine

For example, in Roubaix there is a swimming pool, La Piscine, which is no longer one, but a unique gallerie in the style of Art Deco. The gallery houses a stunning selection of sculptures and paintings, on which the light falls through an enormous sunset painted on glass.

Opened on October 21, 2001, the Museum of Art and Industry La Piscine - André Diligent is located on the site of the former Art Deco municipal swimming pool, built on the initiative of Mayor Jean-Baptiste Lebas between 1927 and 1932 according to the plans of architect Albert Baert (1863-1951) from Lille. Listed today as a cultural heritage of the 20th century, this swimming pool offered at the time quality sports and hygiene services with an innovative social operation that conveyed the image of a working class urban society capable of promoting exceptional and prestigious projects.

The swimming pool was intended as a place of hygiene, the answer to the difficult living conditions of the working class at that time. It was located on a plot of land in the middle of a block of houses and a former ornamental garden created for a family from the textile bourgeoisie. Albert Baert, in his layout and in the decoration of the site, multiplied the symbolic elements that contribute to the charm and interest of this place. He reinterpreted the layout of the Cistercian abbeys in a neo-Byzantine spirit, and the building was organized around a claustral garden. The large basilical nave of the basin, illuminated with glass windows symbolizing the rising and setting sun, took the place of the abbey chapel. The bathing wing extended over two floors with small cells rhythmizing the facades facing the garden. The cafeteria - the swimmers' dining room was embedded in this scheme, where, as a highlight of luxury, a barber store, manicure and pedicure salon, steam baths and an industrial laundry were also installed.

The collections of the Roubaix Museum, made up of works from the 19th and 20th centuries, have an exciting peculiarity: they are arranged along English or American rather than French lines, and remove any hierarchy between applied and fine arts.

The Roubaix Industrial Museum, founded in 1835, is the origin of the grouping shown on the first level of the basin. This exceptional textile collection (several thousand pattern books and fabric samples, ranging from Coptic Egypt to contemporary creations) is presented alternately with the busts of important figures of the textile industry of the North.

On the other side of the basin, beautiful fashion and jewelry collections, also presented in rotation, share the stage with a gallery of portraits of social figures. On the first floor of the basin, around the water area bordered by the sculpture garden, ceramics by Picasso, Dufy, Pignon, Sébastien, Carbonell and Chagall are on display in former dressing rooms that have been transformed into exhibition spaces, placed in view of an important group of still lifes and a glimpse into the collection of objects of art and design. This collection of decorative arts objects is triumphantly overlooked by the monumental Sandier gate at the end of the basin, a jewel of the collection of works of the National Manufactory of Sèvres housed in the museum. This group of statues now extends into the new sculpture gallery, which explores the theme of sculpture production at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries through cross-disciplinary themes (such as public commissions, private interiors, monuments to workers or portraits) and several key dates (notably the international and universal exhibitions of 1925, 1931 and 1937).