It is the most spectacular museum in the city and one of the 50 most frequently visited museums in the world: the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, or MuCEM, in the city of Marseille in Southern France.

Planned by the highly decorated French architect Rudy Ricciotti, the museum was created at the outer point of the Old Harbor, in the direct vicinity of the venerable Fort Saint Jean. At this location, the angular form and color contrast of the facade to the beige of the fortress walls give MuCEM its own identity, avoiding competition with its historical surroundings. It was for just this reason that Ricciotti consciously used black-colored concrete as construction material. And what looks like a dark block from a distance is revealed as one comes closer to be a delicate yet stable outer shell, suffused with light and wind: a construction made of ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) that conjures up the nets of the local fishermen and whose color only enhances the impression of lightness. Colored with Bayferrox® color pigments, the structure seems to be suspended between sea and sky.

UHPC is water resistant and also offers long-term resistance to the salty sea air of the Mediterranean. It is these characteristics that also distinguish the Bayferrox® 330 and Bayferrox® 318 used to color the concrete. Like all Bayferrox® color pigments, thanks to their outstanding light and weather resistance, they are more than capable of lasting for the concrete’s estimated life cycle of at least 100 years. Thus this concrete in the color of dust, immersed in the light of the sun, shows how delicate lightness and great stability can be combined through technological brilliance.

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