Hotel _ Bassin de l’arsenal Paris

 

 

 

Project Hotel in the New Contemporary Art District
Program Hotel
Location Bassin de l’Arsenal, Paris, France
Date 2004
Surface 40,000 m²

General principles

“One still needs chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” — Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The project explores the collapse and metamorphosis of the Haussmannian urban block through an architecture conceived as the fixation of a transforming moment.

 

A Parisian block in metamorphosis

The new contemporary art district is composed of two buildings engaging in a dialogue across space: one dedicated to contemporary art and another embodying a contemporary architecture in movement.

The latter, presented here, completes a Parisian urban block while integrating two inner gardens. It marks the corner of two secondary streets and progressively asserts its identity toward Boulevard de la Bastille, where an underground passage is created for car circulation.

The project originates from the classical figure of the Parisian street-aligned building before gradually deforming, transforming and appearing to collapse toward the canal at the moment it encounters the building located on the opposite bank.

In doing so, it breaks the perspective of the boulevard and redirects the gaze toward the water.

 

An architectural collision

The climax of the project emerges at the meeting point of the two buildings, at the corner of the streets, as though their collision generated a new architectural form.

Parallelepipedic volumes cut through and fragment the whole composition, evoking the frozen emergence of an unknown creation, like a metaphor for the artistic act.

Seen from the city, the building retains the appearance of two relatively traditional constructions covered with a metallic skin punctuated by glazed openings. Gradually, the two volumes deform until they meet at the edge of the canal.

Perpendicular to one another, they seem to collide, collapse and merge together. Roof textures slide across the façades while intrusive volumes multiply and pass through the building from one side to the other.

Yet this collision is not only a collapse: from this encounter emerges an architectural form rising toward the sky.

 

Fixing a moment

The building seeks to capture a tipping point — an architecture suspended between stability and movement, caught in a state of transformation.