Découverte de cette très belle vidéo expérimentale “Paris Underwater” conçue et imaginée par les français Olivier Campagne & Vivien Balzi. La vision de la capitale entièrement inondé, et une séléction de plans dans de nombreux lieux publics. Une bande-son signée par Brice Tillet
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Six artisans showing the creative side of elegant craftsmanship
Parts one and two of our Maison & Objet coverage looked to the fully materialized innovations in furniture and sustainable design, but one of most inspiring sections of the expo is the area dedicated to arts and craft. In this sector creativity reigns, and each artist’s distinct know-how turns raw materials into unique collectibles, sophisticated jewelry, intriguing lamps and more. Each object tells a story, many of the hands that made them.
Observing the world through ancient and forgotten optics, Dominic Stora’s kaleidoscopes, optical games and early animation devices like the phenakistoscope are as much an objet d’art as they are an entertaining toy. His range of unearthed spy devices and more can be purchased by contacting Stora at apreslapluie[at]orange[dot]fr.
Based in Brittany, French artist Pauline Bétin creates beautifully fragile glass sculptures. Imprisoned in the blocks are dreamlike images that seemingly float within the glass, half erased and half embedded within the material. Featuring landscapes or urban industrial environments, the artist works with both mediums to explore the mysteries of opacity and illumination. Bétin sells her decorative objects under the moniker La Fabrique du Verre.
Poetic stories to get kids to sleep is what the paper lampshades and other enlighten paper figures created by Papier à êtres tell. The couple behind the company is both paper craftsmen and artists and most of their creations are made out of their own homemade cotton or linen paper production.
The graceful white figures and handblown lighting sculptures borrow their soft charm from the folded paper they are made from. Inspired by fairy tails, the mini tree-hut lamps and moon-like suspension lamps featuring tiny swinging figures are known to enchant a child’s room or the Parisian Opera House.
Parisian Aude Tahon tells stories of princesses with her refined ultra-feminine floral jewlery. Handmade using the traditional Korean technique of knotting twisted silk yarns or by braiding cotton threads, the artist makes airy rings, bracelets and other creative body accessories.
A trained architect, ceramist Beatrice Bruneteau creates contrasting sandstone and porcelain housewares under the name Brune.
Inspired by rock, cliffs and tree bark, her smooth tea sets and attractive flower pots reflect her talent for pottery, while the willowy tree branches simply allow anyone to elegantly bring a bit of nature indoors.
Marseille-based Jean-Pierre Giusiano turns everyday objects into functional works of art. Kitchen utensils, bicycle pieces or gear boxes are given new life as desk lamps, coffee tables or stools.
Swiss architects HHF and French architects AWP have won a competition to design a series of follies for a new park outside Paris.
The proposed pavilions include an observatory of stacked timber huts that overlooks the Seine.
Elsewhere, clusters of timber sheds will house a visitor’s centre and restaurant, while smaller follies will be scattered around the 113-hectare park.
Each pavilion will be designed around a standard module size to reduce the cost of construction.
Landscape architects Agence TER prepared the proposals for the new riverside park, which is to be located in Carrière-Sous-Poissy, north of the city centre.
HHF Architects also designed a circular pavilion along La Ruta del Peregrino, a pilgrimage route in Mexico – see the project here and see more pavillons along the route here.
See also: more stories about projects by HHF Architects.
Here’s a few more details from HHF and AWP:
Carrière-Sous-Poissy
Architectures in the Parc des bords de Seine
AWP + HHF
The series of a pavilions with different public functions and programs are part of a future 113 hectare large public green space along the Seine river, in Carrière-Sous-Poissy, at the end station of the RER line A and close the renown Villa Savoye from Le Corbusier. The Park designed by the Paris based landscape architects Agence TER will be a public park and ecological showcase for local residents and a leisure destination for people living in and around Paris.
The competition brief included the construction of a visitor’s center, of a restaurant (“guinguette”), of an observa- tory plus about a dozen smaller infrastructure “follies” with different uses.
Similar to the popular wooden preschool toys in form of building blocks made of out of colorful wood, this collection of pavilions and small infrastructure «follies» is based on a modular wood system, repeating and combining different sized and different angled timber frames. This approach allows for interesting and unusual constructions, enabling a wide range of possible variations with a very limited number of elements, while at the same type staying very flexible for future adaptions and during the construction phase. This will result in unique atmospheres and spaces for each of the pavilions and infrastructure follies. In addition to that it’s a relatively low priced construction method which enables the integration of local building know how and local companies.
The site of the project is an exceptional one, for its location along the Seine river and for its “in-between”, dual nature (land/water, city/sprawl, wilderness/domesticated nature). The presence of barges, fishing huts and houseboats, which have been so far inhabiting the site has been a powerful source of inspiration. On the other side, the site boundary is characterized by suburban nondescript housing pavilions. The design springs from a process of hybridization between these two existing habitat models: the floating barge and the archetypical suburban house resulting in a new typology emerging in the park and dealing with the site’s memory and identity both spatially and socially, whilst providing a contemporary and forward-looking response.
By working along residential neighborhoods and along the river, we are invited by this project to come inhabit a large urban room worthy of Paris’ tradition of great terraced boulevards. This very active strip of land is made up of continuous docks, a large mooring space for barges, pontoons, lookouts, observatories, cantilevered terraces… These small, furtive constructions must stimulate the flow of people over the entire length of the park, and towards the water and city, as well as provide facilities for viewing the landscape: framing/unframing. They will bring an inspirational atmosphere, to encourage new experiences. We want to suggest windows for sharing this new kind of landscape, and bring the surrounding city to life by intensifying certain elements of the landscape plan: inscribe it within an urban strategy. The idea is to create conditions for viewing the space, to allow crossovers that are adapted to the buildings’ uses, users, to the evolution of their surroundings.
Location: Carrière-Sous-Poissy, Paris, France
Net floor area: 1900m2 approx.
Type of project: Public equipments. Pavilions and Follies
Planned: 2011
Client: Communauté d’agglomération des Deux Rives de la Seine Architects: AWP + HHF
Project responsible: Alessandra Cianchetta
Team AWP: Marc Armengaud, Matthias Armengaud, Alessandra Cianchetta, Miguel La Parra Knapman, David Perez
Team HHF: Simon Frommenwiler, Simon Hartmann, Tilo Herlach
Structure: EVP
Engineering / QS: GINGER
Competition: 1st prize, 2011 / preliminary studies ongoing
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| Tokyo Apartment by Sou Fujimoto Architects | Museum of Contemporary Art by SANAA | Phinney Modern by Elemental Architecture |
Six housewares brands delightfully confusing indoors and out
At the biannual housewares tradeshow Maison & Objet we found many of the winds of innovation blowing from the outdoor arena this year. The contemporary, nomad-like movement reverses the use of indoor and outdoor spaces. When indoor moves outdoor, along with bathroom and kitchen, the whole living room and dining room seem to follow as well—sometimes even surrounded by walls and a ceiling. Designing for dual living, this shift brings with it the quest for new materials to face outside elements, while keeping the elegance typically reserved for interiors.
Since outdoor furniture requires sophisticated technical materials, working with them often becomes a source of inspiration for designers, like Patricia Urquiola. A Spanish native now working in Milan, she recently created a collection for leading Spanish design firm Kettal. In our interview with Urquiola, a trained architect, she explained that the collaboration with Kettal was all about researching a new material called “Nido d’Ape” (honeycomb) consisting of a PVC fabric knotted in a three-dimensions reminiscent of the “macramé” technique. The team pulled materials from other fields, creating a new manufacturing process to achieve the desired effect.
Urquiola’s idea came from observing a common organic fabric, a coffee filter, under a microscope. The result, surprisingly thick, smooth and rug-like, provides a pleasant cozy feeling with the visual treat of seeing all the filaments formed into mini pyramidal grids. Stretched taut between aluminum frames, the chairs combine the elegance of indoor fabric-based furniture in a range of colors for outdoor—with all the resilience needed for sitting and resistance to any kind of weather. The “Vieques” collection comes out in January 2012.
Also riding the nomadic wave and the constant problem of limited urban space, the newly-formed Dutch company Flux came up with a cutting-edge folding chair. The end-of-studies project of two Dutch designers was launched in March 2011 and already 40,000 units have been sold all over the world.
The durable chair consists of a flat rectangular sheet of polypropylene weighing less than five kilograms that can support up to 160 kg. You can refold over and over (testers gave up after 800 tries) and hang six chairs all at once on the wall thanks to a special belt and wall mount system. UV-resistant and waterproof, it combines stiffness and flexibility in a contemporary design, offered in a wide range of colors.
There is even a kids model also available. Prices run from $200 for the regular model to $110 for the kid’s version, selling purchased online.
While indoor furnishings continue to move outside, urban citizens aim to bring some outdoor favorites inside by gardening in any corner of space. Be it on the balcony, in a courtyard or even inside the apartment, the young French company Bacsac meets this need with their simple accessories. The work of a designer and two landscape architects, their ultra-light bags are easily transportable and can be used both indoor and out. Made from double-walled geotextile fabric (100% recyclable), the containers maintain the necessary balance between air, earth and water and are frost resistant. U.S. shoppers can find them at Sprouthouse.com.
Living al fresco also inspired hybrid leisure objects, like the gracious suspended wooden cradle, half garden hammock and half swing chair, designed by two the Frenchmen of Concept Suspendu. The company, created eight months ago and located in the Alps, specializes in woodwork (one of the pair is a former carpenter) and makes their signed, limited-run furniture from ash—wood known for its solidity and usually used for tool handles.
The Green attitude, an enduring key point of contemporary interior design, was present throughout the show in a number of the projects based on recycling and reuse. Parisian eco-design agency Art Terre pursues a double purpose. Along with recycling materials and reusing objects, their concern is to reconsider the production process and to facilitate social integration of disabled people or former prisoners.
The resulting collection consists of well-designed and well-manufactured original and beautiful items, like ginko-shaped placemats and inflatable flowerpots (as well as a full collection of other flower pots). They all share an innovative process using recycled PVC fabrics made from car industry remnants; the inventive cushions are made of air-bags and customized with a seatbelt to remind the user of the origin of the product. Coatracks and dustbins are made of salvaged bed slats. But the most beautiful achievement is the handmade series of paper lamps, resulting from a paper folding technique similar to Japanese origami.
American movie director David Lynch has completed a nightclub in Paris that’s inspired by and named after Club Silencio from his 2001 film Mulholland Drive.
Members descend six flights of stairs to the basement of 142 rue de Montmartre, a former publishing press where Emile Zola printed his famous headline J’accuse in 1898. The location is steeped in history: 17th century playwright Molière was reportedly buried there and socialist leader Jean Jaurès was murdered just across the street in 1914.
The curved walls are lined with wooden blocks coated in gold leaf and Lynch has furnished the bar with his own chair designs. The venue incorporates a cinema, a stage, a forest-like smoking room and a library. It will host films, art and performances in a program developed with Lynch.
Silencio opens to members on 6 October and membership will cost between €420 and €1500.
Here are some more details from the club’s owners Savoir Faire:
Situated in the heart of historic Paris, 142 rue Montmartre is a mythical address that was once home to two influential leftist newspapers, L’Humanité and L’Aurore, which was famous for printing Émile Zola’s “J’Accuse.”
Today, Arnaud Frisch, manager of the Social Club and the music production company Savoir Faire, endeavours to give this abandoned landmark back its soul with the opening of SILENCIO, a club whose interior was designed by multidisciplinary artist David Lynch.
While its name offers a sly allusion to the club from the director’s 2001 Academy Award nominated film Mullholland Drive, SILENCIO in Paris stands alone as the realisation of his vision for a unique club experience.
The 2,100-square-foot space consists of a series of intimate rooms, each dedicated to a certain purpose or atmosphere, including a live stage with a reflective dance floor, an intimate art library, a cocooned sitting lounge, a spacious 24-seat cinema scheduled by MK2, and more.
Each room evokes Lynch’s visual style through an incisive composition of architecture, furniture, artwork, texture and lighting, a look he achieved working with designer Raphael Navot, architectural agency Enia and light designer Thierry Dreyfus.
Lynch also created three original furniture designs showcased at SILENCIO: “Black Birds” a series of asymmetric faceted black-leather seats and tables; “Wire” a collection of welcoming seats and sofas; and an ergonomic cinema seat that refines the movie-going experience. In addition, the main entrance hall, bar and lounges all feature carpeting with edging designed by Lynch. All furniture and materials were made-to-measure especially for SILENCIO by craftsmen from prestigious firms such as Domeau & Pérès and Ateliers Gohard.
SILENCIO is open daily from 6pm to 6am. Until midnight, the club is reserved exclusively for cardholders and their guests, who can enjoy unlimited access to concerts, films and other performances.
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| Dude Cigar Bar by Studiomake | M.N.ROY by Picault and Godefroy | Paramount by Tom Dixon |
Travelex’s chip-based card allows U.S. travelers greater freedom abroad
Since borrowing a London-based friend’s credit card in order to use the communal bike system in Paris a couple summers back, I’ve been curious about less-complicated solutions to the lack of “chip and PIN” credit card technology available in the States. Designed specifically for traveling Yankees, I recently started using the Cash Passport that Travelex launched late last year. The smart card not only gives users access to chip-enabled services (using it currently in the U.K. made buying Heathrow Express and tube tickets a cinch), but generally eases the woes of carrying personal credit cards.
Pre-paid with Euros or British Pounds, you don’t have to worry about daily exchange-rate fluctuations, incompatible ATMs and the threat of identity theft—unlike normal plastic, the Passport isn’t loaded with any personal information. (One of the biggest implications of these types of cards is cutting down on fraud globally.)
All this safety does have a downside. Travelex’s advanced security checks makes refilling online more difficult than it should be. Though their free emergency assistance is available 24/7, it’s the kind of process you’ll only want to go through if your card is lost or stolen. Load enough money to last the duration of your trip to avoid any hiccups or time-wasting phone calls.
On the upside, consider that Travelex doesn’t charge for balance inquires, ATM withdrawals or for receiving cash back from in-store purchases. When you get home, simply unload remaining balances—you can even transfer what’s left directly to your personal bank account or get a personal check. To learn more about how to feel like a savvy traveler rather than a stupid American, head to Travelex online.
A shelving unit displaying children’s clothes doubles up as a plywood playhouse with a sliding staircase, swinging doors and removable furniture.
The playhouse occupies a children’s clothes shop in Paris, designed by French studio Mut Architecture and architect Benjamin Mahon.
The set of steps slide out to allow shop-workers to reach the highest shelves, while a hollow box on wheels rolls away to provide an island table.
Other interiors that integrate children’s play areas include a perforated bedroom wall that can be used as a ladder and a bed with a play den below.
Photography is by Mut Architecture.
The following short description is from the architects:
In collaboration with Benjamin Mahon, Mut architecture has completed a children’s store in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
The main concept for the store was to construct a large doll house within the store, a house you can pull drawers out of, swing doors from, a doll house that lends itself to the imagination of children.
Ladders on wheels are embedded in the structure of the house, and a box is set within the house and can be removed to be used as a central island within the shop, to expose products.
From the street the giant house seems to be overwhelming the volume of the 16 meter square shop.
We used poplar plywood for the interior of the store with white stratification and mirrors to accent the fresh feel of the wood surfaces.
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| Training Dresser by Peter Bristol | Rocker by Doshi Levien for Richard Lampert | Under My Roof by Christian Vivanco |
Skincare products at Aesop‘s latest store in Paris are displayed on 427 steel caps that would normally be used in the city’s plumbing network.
Designed by Parisian studio Ciguë, the shop is located in the winding streets of the historically aristocratic Le Marais district.
The wall-mounted dishes are filled with clear resin to form a flat surface and finished in varying degrees of blackened, rusted and stripped steel. Larger plumbing caps create basins in the polished concrete counters.
The cast iron spotlights, steel window frames and plant pots in the courtyard beyond were all custom-designed by Ciguë.
Have a look at Aesop’s other stores here, including a kiosk in New York made of 1000 newspapers and another Paris store that’s covered in 3500 pieces of wood.
The information that follows is from Aesop:
Aesop Le Marais
Aesop is pleased to announce the opening of our third Paris store in rue Vieille du Temple in Le Marais. This historical precinct has successively been home to religious orders, nobility and artisans, and was thankfully preserved from Haussmann’s overhaul of Paris.
Today, it displays beautiful buildings in narrow streets, and hosts many excellent cafés and museums. We would not have dreamt of better neighbours.
Aesop Le Marais is a light, minimalist room of polished concrete, with windows on the back wall allowing light to fill the room, and offering a glimpse of lush greenery in the courtyard.
The key element of the design is the integration of 427 small polished steel dishes into the walls, an acknowledgement of the industrial history of this part of Paris. The dishes are, in fact, the curved ‘lids’ which close the pipes used as plumbing throughout the city.
Utilising this material – which is cold to touch yet catches warm light, aesthetically pleasing yet functional – lends the space lyricism and invites our customers to explore and interact with our products.
As always, the design serves to showcase Aesop’s full range of superb skin, hair and body products.
64, rue Vieille du Temple 75003 Paris
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| Aesop Grand Central Kiosk by Tacklebox | Aesop at Merci by March Studio | Aesop Aoyama by Schemata Architecture Office |
Criss-crossing metal beams surround a first floor reading room at a multimedia library near Paris.
Designed by French architect Philippe Gazeau, the Médiathèque Romain Rolland is situated within a residential neighbourhood and overlooks a community park.
Offset behind the white lattice exterior and glazing is a second layer of criss-crossing beams, finished in black, that could be mistaken for shadows.
The reading room occupies the entire first floor of the building and surrounds an enclosed second floor mezzanine where multimedia facilities are located.
The ceiling of this room subtly undulates to create natural drainage slopes on the grass-covered roof above.
Offices, meeting rooms, toilets and an auditorium are located on the ground floor of the library.
Another recently featured building that employs metal latticework is a design institute in Hong Kong – see our earlier story here.
More stories about libraries on Dezeen »
Here are some more details from Philippe Gazeau:
Media Library Romain Rolland
Rue Albert Giry, quartier Cité Cachin, 93230 Romainville
The Romainville multimedia library is located in the heart of a dormitory town that is being completely renovated. The town planners wanted to open up the district by fragmenting the housing blocks, creating a central plain to provide a large park and two facilities, including the multimedia library which is intended to act as an attractive magnet on a neighbourhood level.
The new building floats between two flying carpets. Following a continuous movement, the multimedia library’s volume sweeps over the level of the street and the public garden to slide under the gentle slopes of its planted roof.
It is the project’s roof that gives the initial driving force. The roof’s hills and valleys transmit the sweeping movement through to the level of the central plain, crossing through the large reading room on the upper floor.
This is achieved by the negative curves reflecting the undulating movements of the roof through to the ceiling. As well as traversing, the oriented interior space of the reading room overlooking the street and garden is also traversed and suspended by the landscape as it rises up to become the ceiling.
The new media library at Romainville can be seen as a building with simple architectural forms, but with great power and expressive richness. It is a building ‘oriented’ between the new street and the large redesigned garden.
It is a building ‘hierarchized’ on the basis of 3 superimposed horizontal sequences: a base on the ground floor, a large metal covered hall on the first floor cantilevered on both the street side and the garden side, lastly a topographically undulating vegetated roof. These three main elements structure and bring together the building’s architectural and functional image.
The project is no more extensive than the surface area of the plot proposed in the overall development plan, thereby freeing up the largest possible area for the future garden. The main volume is aligned with the new street, but the ground floor recess under the first floor cantilever is an opportunity to lay out a vast covered, sheltered passage between the public roadway and the media library.
The building takes its characteristic appearance from the first floor metal structure’s extensive columnless overhang. On the street, the monumental awning opening onto this big covered area naturally signals the entrance to the building.
Some powerful architectural sequences accompany the user or visitor from the outside right into the heart of the media library: the parvis under the awning, the exhibition hall, the vertical link space with the grand staircase, from where you come to the main reading room.
Finding one’s way around is facilitated by the large north-east and south-west windows facing each other like a pair of indoor-outdoor bookends.
Another powerful feature of the reading room is its ceiling, which follows the underside of the undulating vegetated roof. The very fluid crossing space is also set in movement through the random shapes of the ceiling, contrasting with the straight frontage walls.
A second mezzanine floor houses the multimedia area: on the ‘Russian doll’ principle, this area readily accessible from the adult and children’s sections hovers slightly above the rest of the browsing areas for reasons of soundproofing, while remaining highly visible and attractive from the central area.
The two glass frontages are picture windows looking onto the city or the garden through the filter of the exterior metal structure A maintenance area midway between the glazed façade and the structure gives depth to the casing. This depth is used to install the outer blinds protecting the reading areas in conditions made to last.
Click above for larger image
Circular translucent skylights nested in the roof bring extra light to the central area, while providing smoke ejection from the interior volume.
Click above for larger image
The green roof is treated as a natural but hanging extension of the future garden. Its topography lends it a different status from the ordinary vegetated terrace roof. This roof can be seen from neighbouring buildings, and we feel it is very important that it blends in with the future landscaped area.
Click above for larger image
The inverted impact of its undulations is a key element in characterizing the atmosphere in the large reading room, and evidences the determination for this project to be highly consistent, with continuity between the work on the interior spaces and the handling of the exterior architecture. The metal structure featuring like a grid around the first floor, and the cantilevering over the ground floor areas are the other main examples of this.
Client : Mairie de Romainville
Architect : Philippe Gazeau
Project manager : Lorraine Pele, Benjamin Clarens
Engineers : SLH
Area : 2085 m² SHON
Cost : 3 730 000 € HT
2004-2011
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| Torre Telefónica Diagonal ZeroZero by EMBA | Pedestrian bridge by Bernard Tschumi | Design Institute by CAAU |
Retour sur l’impressionnante vidéo de ces quatres français réalisant la traversée des plus hautes tours jumelles de Paris : les Mercuriales. Une ligne suspendue sur plus de 35 mètres, le tout sur une réalisation de Sébastien Montaz-Rosset et sur la bande son de “Daft Punk – Fall (M83 Remix)”.
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