Librairie-boutique du musée Guimet

[ 2025 ]

Project type complete redesign of the bookstore
State project built
Location Paris 16e
Client Grand Palais Rmn
Area 80 m2
Budget 150 000 €HT
Mission full architectural services
Timeline work september > october 2025
Photographer Christophe Caudroy

The new bookshop at the Guimet Museum has been designed around a modular display system, allowing the space to be easily reconfigured in response to the museum’s temporary exhibitions.

All display unit bases were crafted from birch plywood, while the upper elements were made from Le Pavé, a 100% recycled material manufactured in the Paris region.

A defining feature of the project is the large display wall positioned on the mezzanine facing the entrance. This intervention reinforces the perception of the double-height volume, establishes a clear spatial hierarchy, and visually places the mezzanine in the background.

Sustainability was a central consideration throughout the project. The existing parquet flooring was preserved and restored, the electrical infrastructure was retained, and the lighting design was entirely rethought using the existing networks. An existing bookcase was also reused and clad in Le Pavé to ensure a cohesive architectural language throughout the space.

The design phase was completed in three months, and construction was delivered in six weeks within an occupied building, meeting the operational requirements of the Guimet Museum.

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 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.