Beaubourg

[ 2020 ]

Project type Design of the bookstore on the 6th floor
Location Paris 4th
Client RMN-GP
Timeline June 2020

For the new bookstore at the Centre Pompidou located on the 6th floor, Cent15 Architecture imagines a space with a unique design language, playing with different scales through a visible tubular structure subdivided into modules, echoing the building’s apparent structural principle.

The entire layout, organized according to an independent grid of 140 centimeters, shapes and defines the space. Here, it serves as the entry point into a minimalist universe, a welcoming environment where the visitor will be immersed. The bookstore truly exists as a space. Within it, the furniture dictates the movement of the public and creates a dynamic progression around a central core, guiding and advancing the visitor through an open circuit, unfixed in both time and space.

This environment is energized by a modular system that displays objects, organizes the space by themes, and defines circulation within the shop. The furniture has a nomadic character. Independent from the building, it is easily movable on wheels and reconfigurable to adapt to future presentation needs and proposals.

A know-how serving the greatest number

The architect founded Cent 15 Architecture in 2011 and immediately embarked on his first major project: the renovation of the Trianon theater in Paris (18th arrondissement). While the architect uses his fresh perspective as an asset to sharpen his skills, Cent 15 Architecture has spent the following decade patiently exploring all types of projects in Paris, the suburbs, and provinces, mastering the constraints inherent to each building and finding relevant solutions, regardless of the context of the structures to be built or their budgets.

While Cent 15 Architecture is skilled at managing large teams in all languages of Babel, it intentionally avoids taking on too many projects, as its architecture draws strength from its pursuit of perfection, its almost obsessive desire for the delivered building to be the image of the future project and the future itself.

Cent 15 Architecture is concerned with sustainability in architecture, using organic, natural, and bio-based materials. This is evident in the Tekès restaurant project, which incorporates a 10 cm thick earth slab for the restaurant floor, an earth plaster on all the walls and ceiling, rammed earth for the reception desk and the bases of the counters and benches.

The agency also focuses on implementing the most natural climate principles within the home. The 9th Avenue project, for example, involves the construction of a wooden-frame house with straw insulation, an interior earth plaster (partly sourced from the land itself), and heating generated by biomass (wood from trees felled on the property).

In rehabilitation projects, the goal is to retain as much of the existing structure as possible, reusing what is useful on-site and thus avoiding the implementation of excessive new elements. One of the agency's principles is the repurposing of certain materials (often inexpensive). The Opéra project, for example, utilizes aluminum film insulation for the façades of "call boxes," while the Papier Tigre project uses recycled corrugated fiberboard sheets as the formwork for the air conditioning motor. Each material has its own nobility, depending on how it is applied and presented.

The agency's approach is ultimately to bring architectural issues back to their core functions, with the perfectly mastered function creating the original aesthetics of a project that is always unique.