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Napoléon apartment by FREAKS freearchitects

Amy Frearson — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:00:22 +0000

French studio FREAKS freearchitects has renovated an apartment on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, once the address of Napoleon I, so the architects decided to dress up as the former emperor for the photo shoot (+ slideshow).

"We're getting more and more bored by the nice shots where everything is so clean, with the perfect Scandinavian-design chair, the perfect white orchid, the perfect art book on the table," FREAKS freearchitects partner Guillaume Aubry told Dezeen.

Over the course of the project, the architects learnt that Napoleon had been responsible for the construction of the street and that it was possible he'd lived in the apartment they were refurbishing.

"Napoleon supposedly having lived there was a running joke among the building team and us," said Aubry. "That's why we decided, the three of us, to sort of perform the photo shoot wearing Napoleon-style hats."

The pictures show the architects exploring the rooms of the apartment, which include large living and dining rooms with a new kitchen and bathroom added to one side.

In addition to the existing bedroom, two children's rooms are inserted into the former utilities area and each one features a mezzanine first floor accessed by an industrial ladder.

Period mouldings are retained in the front rooms, but the architects have added modern details such as fluorescent tube lights and faceted kitchen units. "One of the main interventions consisted of opening the new kitchen towards the dining room, while taking charge to use a contemporary architectural langage," said the architects.

The renovation didn't include the addition of furniture, which is why one of the photographs shows the architects sitting on imaginary chairs.

FREAKS freearchitects often take a playful approach to their projects and others we've featured include dimension arrows stuck to the facade of Oscar Niemeyer's French Communist Party Headquarters and a cosmetics shop with a wooden tunnel inside.

See more architecture and design in Paris »

Photography is by David Foessel. The dog is Merlin (photographer's own).

Here's a description from the FREAKS freearchitects:

FREAKS has been commissioned to work on the transformation of a 170sqm flat downtown Paris, Rue de Rivoli. The Rue de Rivoli, which goes from Place de la Concorde until Place de la Bastille, has been built under Napoleon the 1st. The very first part of the street, facing the Jardin des Tuileries was his own property and he might have lived here or there in one of those chic flats.

The order was to transform that high ceiling stateroom into a familial flat, including two new children bedrooms in addition with the parents one. Therefore, the main target was to create new connections through the rooms ; some doors have been closed, some others have been pierced to avoid the typical dead-end distribution system. The service rooms on the backyard, at the end of a long and narrow corridor, have been transformed into the children area, to which one can acces by the service door, turning that part into an independant space within the flat. The bedrooms made profit of the high ceiling by embedding mezzanine, on which one can access by using a crinoline ladder.

A new kitchen + bathroom have been placed on the street side. Most of the existing moldings have been painted in white. The very cute venitian style boudoir has only been renewed.

One of the main interventions consisted in opening the new kitchen towards the dinning room while taking charge to use a comtemporary architectural langage within the space. No furniture or decoration were required, only a dozen of industrial waterproof neons (Sammode) with a special brass cladding have been used on the dinning room and billiard room walls.

Above: floor plan

Above: long section through bathroom and kitchen

Above: cross section through kitchen and front room

Above: cross section of children's bedroom

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MÉCA by BIG and FREAKS freearchitects

Amy Frearson — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:30:29 +0000

Danish architects BIG and French studio FREAKS freearchitects have designed a cultural centre for Bordeaux with a huge stage in its middle.

Named MÉCA, which is an acronym for Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, the centre will provide a combined new home for visual arts organisation FRAC, performing arts centre the OARA and literature/movie organisation the ECLA.

The surrounding riverfront landscape will ramp up through the building's rectangular central hollow to provide a public square for outdoor exhibitions and events that is directly above the ground floor lobbies.

Both the building and the surrounding waterside promenade will be clad in limestone, matching most of the city's historical architecture.

BIG have also recently designed a skyscraper shaped like a hash symbol, while earlier this year FREAKS freearchitects stuck huge dimension arrows onto a well-known building in Paris.

See all our stories about BIG here and see all our stories about FREAKS freearchitects here.

Here's some information from BIG:

BIG DESIGNS A MÉCA TO CULTURE IN BORDEAUX, FRANCE

Team BIG+FREAKS freearchitects, dUCKS scéno, Khephren Ingénierie, VPEAS, ALTO Ingénierie, Vincent Hedont, PBNL, Mryk & Moriceau, Ph.A wins the competition to design a new 12 000 m2 cultural center on the riverfront of Bordeaux, merging three cultural institutions into one single building.

The new Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, MÉCA, located on the historical riverfront of Bordeaux will house three regional visual and performing arts agencies FRAC, the ECLA and the OARA in one single institution.

The Regional Council of Bordeaux selected the winning team among proposals from SANAA, the Toulouse-based firm W-Architectures and Bordeaux-based FLINT.

BIG’s proposal arranges the new center for contemporary art, the performing arts institution and the center for literature and movies around a public space open towards the city of Bordeaux and the Garonne River.

The building is conceived as a single loop of public space and cultural institutions as the pavement of the promenade rises to form the roof of the main lobbies, ascends vertically along the stage tower of OARA, bridges across the promenade with the sky lit galleries of the FRAC and returns vertically to the ground at the archives of the ECLA in order to reunite with the waterfront promenade.

“When a region or a city invests millions in a major new cultural institution - it often ends up benefiting only the informed few that already have an interest in the arts.

Not only does the MÉCA spill its activities into the public realm and the urban room, but the public is also invited to walk around, through, above and below the new cultural gateway.

By inviting the art into the city and the city into the arts, the MÉCA will provide opportunities for new hybrids of cultural and social life beyond the specific definitions of its constituent parts.” Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.