Tékès, Restaurant

[ 2021 ]

Project type Rehabilitation of the restaurant Tékès
Location Paris 2nd
Client Private
Area 260m2
Timeline November 2021
Photographer Christophe Caudroy

A vegetarian cuisine conceived by an Israeli chef.

A return to the essentials, to our roots. An architecture shaped by natural materials, earth, stone, and wood. In response to the depletion of resources, this project explores the potential of raw earth construction. A project of research and experimentation using ancestral materials.

A single, large dining room opens generously to the outside through wide bay windows facing the street, as well as toward the rear patio, allowing for natural ventilation.

The kitchen is placed within the main room, behind a counter where guests can dine while watching the chefs at work.
Elements made from the same earth material, structuring the space, emerge from the raw earth floor. The furniture continues this monolithic language: wooden chairs and tables made of a Hainaut blue stone. The overall composition is balanced by the lightness of linen curtains and the softness of natural light.

Fruits and vegetables from the earth are displayed on a central stand in the heart of the room.

The project embodies a frugal modernity, blending the valorization of local resources and craftsmanship with bioclimatic principles and contemporary design.

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.