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      Traditional Hong Kong diners inform interior of Bao Express in Paris

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      Design studio Atelieramo has completed a retro interior for a Chinese restaurant in Paris, featuring celadon-green walls and curvaceous wooden booths modelled on those found in Hong Kong diners from the 1970s.

      Architect Tala Gharagozlou and designer Virginie de Graveron oversaw the interior concept for Bao Express, a restaurant near Bastille in the 11th arrondissement that serves dim sum and bao buns.
      Bao Express is a Chinese restaurant in Paris. Top photo by Géraldine MartensHoused in a former button factory, the 500-square-metre space is divided into three areas: a bakery, a diner and a basement bar.
      Atelieramo set out to create a series of distinct yet connected spaces that evoke the architecture and pop culture of 1970s Hong Kong – in particular its greasy spoon cafes, locally known as cha chaan tengs.
      Diners can sit in the eatery’s cosy wood-lined booths”We reinterpreted snippets of that vibrant Hong Kong urban atmosphere with its coloured pavings, pastel colours, neon lights and dense mix of patterns and motifs,” said the studio.

      “The aim was not to create a decor but rather, with a playful nod to these references, create a new atmosphere distinct to Bao’s new space.”
      A larger skylit dining area is located in the rear. Photo by Géraldine MartensThe adaptation of the existing abandoned building involved significant alterations to the floor plates and structure, along with the addition of a new staircase and circulation.
      From the street, customers enter a small bakery and cafe serving sweet and savoury snacks to eat in or take away. What appears as a simple neighbourhood cafe conceals the presence of the larger dining areas, which are set back in the building’s plan.
      A new staircase leads down to the basement bar. Photo by Bérénice BonnotThe kitchens are visible from the street and guests walk past colourful crates of raw produce before passing through a metal curtain to reach the main Bao Express diner.
      The long dining space features cosy booths with sinuous wooden frames. The pastel-green walls are contrasted with bespoke bright-red sconces and simple mosaic panels that echo the materials of the central bar.

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      Towards the rear of the building is a larger dining area topped with an expansive skylight. This bright and airy space is filled with plants that create the feeling of dining in a winter garden.
      Exposed masonry walls painted in celadon-green form the basis for a playful colour palette featuring contrasting peach and pink elements as seen in the glossy tabletops.
      A hammered-metal artwork by SupaKitch decorates the ceiling in the barThe studio’s eclectic use of colour and pattern extends to the geometric tiled floors and punchy black-and-white stripes that are painted on the walls of the staircase leading down to the basement bar Underpool.
      This bar area features a hammered-metal ceiling installation by French artist SupaKitch, with a rippled surface that reflects the blue-green interior and creates the impression of looking up at an upside-down swimming pool.
      The artwork creates the impression of looking up at a swimming poolBao Express is part of a family of eateries in Paris owned by restaurateurs Céline Chung and Billy Pham. Atelieramo was responsible for designing several of the duo’s restaurants, each of which has a unique character inspired by different aspects of Chinese culture.
      Another eatery informed by traditional cha chaan tengs is The Astor restaurant in Hong Kong’s Eaton hotel, designed by New York studio AvroKO, which mixes elements of the city’s diners and street food stalls with nods to the arthouse films of Wong Kar-Wai.
      The photography is by Carole Cheung unless otherwise stated.

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      Citrons et Huîtres oyster bar creates impression of “diving into an aquarium”

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      French interior designer Marion Mailaender has completed a seafood bar in Paris named Citrons et Huîtres, which features oyster-shaped door handles and a stainless steel counter informed by fishmongers.

      Mailaender, who specialises in creating spaces “with a great sense of humour”, designed the bar to resemble an elevated market stall, where guests can dine inside or take away platters of oysters and shellfish.
      Citrons et Huîtres is an oyster bar with coral-coloured stoolsCitrons et Huîtres has a raw steel facade informed by the storefronts of local fishmongers, which have floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the streets of Paris.
      Guests enter the bar through a door with a bronze handle shaped like an oyster shell, while a matching neon sign is fixed on the facade above the bar’s name.
      The bar has door handles shaped like oyster shellsInside, the space has a vaulted ceiling that reaches more than four and a half metres in height, which is painted blue together with the walls to create the impression of “diving into an amazing aquarium”, the owners said.

      The walls are decorated with prints by Mailaender’s husband, the artist Thomas Mailaender, who used a cyanotype printing process dating back to 1842 to produce ethereal blue photographs of coastal scenes.
      An oyster-shaped neon sign decorates the facadeCountertops are rendered in stainless steel and finished with a “pearly sheen”, while coral-coloured stools line the bar.
      The bar serves local French oysters from Brittany, presented on stainless steel trays that complement the interior.
      “Like a market stall with its stainless steel seafood counter, Citrons et Huîtres invites guests to savour the most incredible oysters while sipping on a glass of white,” the bar’s owners explained.
      Walls and ceilings are painted in a moody shade of blueThe name Citrons et Huîtres was chosen to reference a still-life by French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who once had his studio in the same building that now houses the oyster bar.
      “At the height of his glory in 1900, Renoir created Citrons et Huîtres, a piece of art that celebrates the most beautiful shellfish, classified as a national heritage of French art,” said the owners.
      The bar serves local French oysters and mussels from BrittanyOther oyster bars with interiors informed by the food on offer include Vancouver’s ShuckShuck, which is traversed by a curving concrete counter, and Watchman’s in Atlanta with its “spare nautical” interiors.
      The photography is by Thomas Tissandier.

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      Golem creates “pleasure-driven” pink interior for Superzoom gallery

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      Bubblegum-pink walls, floors and furniture create unconventional spaces for displaying art at this gallery in Paris designed by local studio Golem.

      Headed by architect and artist Ariel Claudet, the practice was invited to design the interior for the Superzoom art gallery, which is located in the historic Le Marais district.
      Superzoom gallery in Paris features bubblegum-pink interiorsThe gallery comprises three spaces arranged in an unusual order, with the gallery director’s office at the entrance, a white-cube gallery space in the centre and an accessible storage space at the rear.
      “We flipped upside-down the classic and elitist sequence of an art gallery, offering visitors a new pleasure-driven experience and the gallery managers three spatial tools for a large range of curatorial approaches,” explained Claudet.
      Pink is Superzoom’s signature colourSuperzoom’s signature colour pink was used as the basis for the design, reflecting the vibrancy of the local nightlife and techno scene where the gallery mingles with artists and collectors, according to Claudet.

      An integrated sound system hooked up to a vinyl record player provides a soundtrack of electronic music to enhance this connection.
      The “pink den” contains a built-in bench for visitors and a synthetic grassBy placing the director’s bright-pink office at the front, Golem aimed to create an entrance that is warmer and more inviting than a typical white gallery space.
      The “pink den” contains a built-in bench for visitors and a fake grass carpet that contributes to the warm, tonal aesthetic.
      The integrated sound system is hooked up to a record playerVisitors can continue through into a large and versatile white-walled gallery. This display area remains connected to the main spatial concept thanks to the pink openings on either side.
      The final space within the gallery is a storage area with walls painted the same shade of lively pink. In a conventional gallery setting, this space would be hidden away. But here, it is open and accessible to visitors.

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      Each of the spaces in Superzoom’s gallery can be used for exhibiting work, either independently or together.
      For example, Golem suggested the white cube could be used for a solo show while other artists’ work is presented in the director’s office and storage space.
      A white-walled gallery provides more space for exhibiting artAll of the furniture and the pink wall separating the white cube from the director’s office are mobile and can be removed to create a larger space for exhibitions or parties.
      Golem designed the baby pink table featured in the director’s office as an emblem of the gallery that can be taken to art fairs or used for client dinners.
      The pink office table can be removed and brought to art fairsClaudet founded Golem in 2021 after working as an architect for practices including Rem Koolhaas’s Rotterdam-based firm OMA.
      Other all-pink interiors published on Dezeen include a fur-covered Balenciaga store in London and the Minimal Fantasy holiday apartment in Madrid.
      The photography is by Cyrille Lallement.

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      GSL Gallery takes over disused Parisian factory with “punk” interiors

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      Weathered walls and concrete floors feature in this design gallery that creative collective The Guild of Saint Luke and architecture firm Studio ECOA have set up inside a former factory in Paris.

      Spread across one storey and two mezzanines, GSL Gallery provides a mixture of studio and exhibition space for the group of architects, artists and artisans that make up The Guild of Saint Luke.
      GSL Gallery sits inside an old factoryThe gallery occupies a disused factory in Pantin, a neighbourhood in northeastern Paris with a growing arts and culture scene.
      In recent years, the building operated as a classic car garage but was purchased by art dealer and gallerist Hadrien de Montferrand during the pandemic with the aim of transforming the site into a gallery.
      The building’s concrete floors were retainedDe Montferrand enlisted locally based Studio ECOA to carry out all the necessary architectural changes and asked The Guild of Saint Luke (GSL) to steer the building’s design and become its first tenant.

      “We were charmed by the space and found the patina and raw walls to be punk and accidentally on-point,” GSL’s creative director John Whelan told Dezeen.
      Clean white panelling was added to give the space the look of a typical gallery”Working in close collaboration with Studio ECOA, we proposed a project that retained all of the rawness of the spaces with very minimal design interventions,” he continued.
      “We felt that it would be criminal to interfere with the existing mood, which is melancholic and eerily beautiful.”
      Studio ECOA restored the building’s facade and aluminium roof, as well as preserving its original concrete flooring.
      A live-work space can be found on GSL Gallery’s first mezzanineBoxy storage units were built on either side of the front door to form a corridor-like entrance to the ground floor, where white panelling was added across the lower half of the patchy, time-worn walls to emulate the look of a typical gallery.
      This ground-floor space will be used to display a changing roster of avant-garde installations, which GSL hopes to finance by using the gallery’s workspaces to produce more commercial projects for design brands.

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      “Commercial endeavours will help to fund more proactive ‘passion projects’, where we will exhibit GSL’s own designs along with designers and artists that we admire,” Whelan said.
      “Our chief motivation is creative freedom, as we hope to produce installations that do not necessarily adhere to a commercial brief.”
      Bathroom facilities are contained in a mirrored volumeThe building’s two existing mezzanines were cut back to create a central atrium, which draws natural light into the gallery’s interior.
      The lower mezzanine now houses a hybrid live-work space where GSL members or visiting artists can stay the night.
      This space is centred by a large Donald Judd-style wooden table and also accommodates a bed, kitchenette and a bathroom concealed within a mirrored volume.
      Metal sanitary ware reflects the light in the bathroomExtra exhibition space is provided on the secondary mezzanine that sits beneath the building’s roof, directly under a series of expansive skylights.
      Prior to now, GSL has largely specialised in hospitality interiors – restoring historic brasseries across Paris and devising opulent restaurants such as Nolinski near the Musée du Louvre and Maison Francois in London.
      The lower mezzanine also houses a bed and a large table”We hope that the gallery will be an extension of the aesthetic that we are trying to develop, embracing new ideas but never abandoning the pursuit of beauty,” Whelan explained.
      “It feels like a good time to do so, as Covid has cleared and a mood of optimism in design has emerged. This bracing, minimal space feels almost like a clean slate and invites a multitude of possibilities.”
      The second mezzanine sits directly underneath the building’s skylightsOther recent additions to Paris’s cultural landscape include a major extension of the Musée Albert Kahn by Kengo Kuma and Associates, which made room for a historic collection of 72,000 photographs.
      Elsewhere in the French capital, Bruno Gaudin Architectes just completed a 15-year renovation of the National Library of France, incorporating a number of new circulation routes and public spaces.
      The photography is by Oskar Proctor. 

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      Celine recalls “vintage spirit” at Rue Saint-Honoré boutique

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      Celine creative director Hedi Slimane channelled “French elegance” when designing the latest Celine boutique in central Paris, which features expanses of brass and marble as well as Slimane-designed furniture.

      Located on Paris’ Rue Saint-Honoré, known for its luxury shopping, the store sits within a 19th-century Haussmann building and connects to a Celine Haute Parfumerie store that was opened in 2019 and references old art deco perfumeries.
      The store was designed by Hedi SlimaneSet over two floors, the 137-square-metre store is dedicated to the brand’s leather goods, accessories and fine jewellery. Its interior was designed by Celine’s creative director, Slimane, who has helmed the fashion house since 2018.
      The Rue Saint Honoré store continues Slimane’s vision for Celine’s global store interior identity, which the brand explained recalls a vintage spirit and ideas of French elegance – much like its recently opened Bond Street store.
      It references French modernism”Conceived as a timeless setting, the architecture of the boutique gives a sense of intimacy, precisely recalling old art deco perfumers’ designs,” said Celine.

      “The ground floor, dedicated to leather goods, fine jewellery and women’s accessories, is structured around the ideas of French elegance and ‘vintage’ spirit.”
      Slimane also referenced French modernism through the choice of materials and furniture for the store.
      Brass, wood, marble and glass were used throughout the storeIn a nod to the neighbouring perfume store, whose walls were clad in sheets of imposing black and white marble, identical sheets of antique marble were used for the floors of the accessories and jewellery store.
      A jewel-like, golden brass, semi-helicoidal staircase tops the white-veined marble floor and leads visitors up to a mezzanine level and Parisian-style salon used to display artisanal bags from Celine’s Haute Maroquinerie collection.

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      The upper level of the store is host to an antique marble fireplace, zigzagging walls of mirrored panels and wooden furniture wrapped in leather and shaggy fur designed by Slimane.
      Oxidised metal panels clad the walls of the ground floor between backlit, ribbed glass louvres, while vitrine-style shelving and cabinetry recall opulent modernist interiors.
      The store will stock accessories and jewelleryArt pieces selected from the Celine Art Project are displayed throughout the store, including a totem by Ian LC Swordy, a painting by Will Boone and a suspended glass and golden brass mobile by Virginia Overton that was personally commissioned by Slimane.
      Earlier in December, Slimane showcased his 17th collection for Celine which saw the creative director return to Los Angeles to present his Autumn Winter 2023 womenswear show at the Wiltern Theatre – an art deco landmark built in 1931.
      Following Slimane’s appointment as Celine’s creative director, he began carrying out renovations of Celine stores worldwide developing signature design codes for the brand’s store interiors.
      The photography is courtesy of Celine.

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      Design Brut: Philia & Kids showcases sculptural furniture designed by “rather wise” children

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      Designers Antoine Behaghel and Alexis Foiny have created sculptural olive wood furniture based solely on drawings by children for a Galerie Philia exhibition.

      Design Brut: Philia & Kids is the inaugural programme of a non-profit initiative conceived by international art gallery Galerie Philia that aims to engage children in design.
      Design Brut: Philia & Kids was an exhibition on display in ParisThe project’s first edition invited 19 kids from a primary school in the Breil-sur-Roya village in France to design sculptural furniture that was exhibited at Espace Meyer Zafra in Paris from November until last week.
      Informed by the late French painter Jean Dubuffet, the initiative is named after art brut – or “raw art” – Dubuffet’s name for art created outside of academic limitations, such as art made by children.
      The furniture was constructed using children’s drawingsParticipants aged six to seven took part in a workshop over five months, where they were asked to draw their own interpretations of sculptural design under the supervision of BehaghelFoiny Studio founders Antoine Behaghel and Alexis Foiny and their teacher Virgile Ganne.

      The drawings range from a crocodile-like bench to colourful dining chairs and spikier, more abstract forms.
      “Several shepherds’ children drew hooves on the legs of the furniture, or horns on the backs of the chairs,” noticed Behaghel and Foiny.
      “Others, living near olive groves and the surrounding forest, drew leaves and branches on their furniture,” they told Dezeen.
      Nineteen children took part in the projectThe designers explained that they encouraged the kids to “assert their own creativity” as well as observe their classmates’ drawings and borrow forms from each other to make the design experience collaborative.
      “Against all odds, we realised that, when faced with furniture design, the children’s first intentions were rather wise, and copied the shapes of furniture they saw every day,” they said.
      Antoine Behaghel and Alexis Foiny constructed the furniture from olive woodAfter this, Behaghel and Foiny sorted the drawings into different furniture typologies including tables, chairs, stools, coat racks and pedestal tables, as well as categorising the creations by “spirits and styles”.
      The pair then worked with a cabinetmaker in Breil-sur-Roya to bring the drawings to life by making physical furniture out of local olive wood.
      “In some places, we shrank or enlarged the silhouettes drawn by the children, to better distribute the weight,” noted the designers.

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      During this process, the children were taken on a tour of a local sawmill and shown every stage of the production process in order to familiarise them with carpentry.
      Behaghel and Foiny explained that olive wood was chosen for its cultural significance to Breil-sur-Roya, which is known as the “pays des oliviers” (olive tree country).
      The designers painted the material in various colourful shades that aimed to subtly tint, rather than conceal, its veiny surface.
      “It seemed to us very relevant to associate the intervention of very young children wiht a thousand-year-old wood!” noted the designers.
      The pieces range from recognisable silhouettes to more abstract formsThe pair hopes that the workshop will have taught the children about the importance of furniture design while showcasing their personal creativity without limitations.
      “In the end, the children’s drawings showed a real spontaneity,” reflected Behaghel and Foiny.
      “They are both free from technical reflexes and therefore led us to take risks and at the same time detached from the aesthetic automatisms that we impose on ourselves more or less consciously as professional designers,” they added.
      “They led us to extract ourselves from standardisation of tastes and beauty, to play more with imbalances and proportions.”
      Subtle colour was used to brighten each wooden pieceThis is not the first time that children have tried their hand at chair design. Third and fourth graders at a school in New York have designed a number of seating collections under the supervision of art instructor Bruce Edelstein, including chairs with horns and other wooden seats.
      The photography is by Maison Mouton Noir. 
      Design Brut: Philia & Kids was on display at Espace Meyer Zafra from 10 November to 8 December 2022. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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      Emilieu Studio uses local materials to form mobile furniture in Toulon design school

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      Moveable furnishings crafted from old ship sails and plywood offcuts appear throughout the École Camondo Méditerranée design school in Toulon with interiors by French practice Emilieu Studio.

      The southerly outpost of Paris’s École Camondo is set on the coast of the French Riviera and features a pared-back open-plan interior meant to reflect “how design and sustainability intersect”.
      Design school École Camondo Méditerranée has a pared-back interiorIts sparse 2,000-square-metre floor plan is interrupted by a series of boxy storage units where students keep all their equipment.
      Each one is made of marine plywood offcuts that Emilieu Studio found in a nearby factory, selecting the material for its lightweight, hardwearing and water-resistant qualities.
      Storage units were painted to look like local rock and marbleDecorative artist Pierre-Yves Morel was enlisted to paint the surfaces of the units to resemble different types of marble and rock that are local to Toulon.

      “We had two difficulties with adornment: aesthetics could not come across functionality and we had to showcase the wonderful raw materials of Provence without extraction,” explained the studio. “Our only room for manoeuvre was surface, so we dared to rehabilitate faux.”
      Wheeled plinths can be turned into mobile whiteboards and trolleysOtherwise, the decor was kept to a minimum save for a few blown-up maps of Toulon that the studio mounted on walls and moveable partitions.
      “They allow a better understanding of the territory and encourage collaborative projects by being fully annotatable and magnetic,” Emilieu Studio explained.

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      Marine plywood was also used to create several wheeled plinths that, with some extensions, can be transformed into mobile trolleys, whiteboards or work tables.
      The plinths also form the basis of the school’s modular sofas, which are finished with chunky cushions upholstered in old boat sails from the harbour in nearby Marseille. These can be removed and stacked to create seating in other pockets of the room.
      The plinths also form the base of the school’s modular sofa systemThe only fixed elements of the school’s interior are the stainless steel units that make up the kitchen area, as these had to be linked to the building’s plumbing system.
      There’s also a colour-coded bin station with built-in weighing scales so that students can manage their waste output and organise it for use in future projects.
      More traditional desks with glossy white countertops were also dotted around the space.
      Blown-up maps of Toulon act as decorationEcole Camondo Méditerranée is one of five projects shortlisted in the civic and cultural interior category of the 2022 Dezeen Awards.
      Other projects in the running include the world’s first multi-storey skatepark in Folkestone and Stanbridge Mill Library by Crawshaw Architects, which occupies a former cow shed.
      The photography is by Antoine Huot. 

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      Chzon studio designs airport departure hall to reference Parisian life

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      French design agency Chzon studio has added archways and fountains that reference iconic Parisian monuments to a departure lounge at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

      Chzon studio redesigned the boarding gate area in Terminal 2G with the aim of creating a dynamic representation of Paris’ design and history in a typically utilitarian area of the airport.
      The vast space is punctuated by white columns and sculptural installationsThe 1,300-square-meter space is populated by rounded seating in dark blue and green upholstery, which takes aesthetic cues from the 1960s and 1970s, arranged in benches, booths and pairs.
      To zone the space and instill privacy, the studio added partitions and expressive white sculptures by artist studio Les Simonnets, which double as alternative bench seating.
      References to Paris are made at varying scales throughout the spaceThe studio made reference to iconic Parisian monuments by installing archways that nod to the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a fountain that is reminiscent of the water feature in the Jardin du Luxembourg and surrounded by green metal chairs similar to those found in Paris’ parks.

      Rows of wooden tables have been inlaid with chess boards in another reference to the parks of Paris. Passengers can use these as workspaces, to eat at, or to play games on while waiting for flights.
      The miniature fountain is a focal point within the terminalAs well as designing some of the lighting for the interior in-house, the studio also sourced and installed antique lighting and other decorative objects from the city’s St Ouen flea market, including giant wall lights and aluminium sunshades.
      To keep the space relevant to its function, Chzon also made references to aeroplane design by employing metallic details, patterned finishes and reclining plane-style seats designed by Italian architect and furniture designer Osvaldo Borsani.

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      “[The design] dramatises the boarding lounge while keeping the passenger informed,” Dorothée Meilichzon, founder of Chzon studio, said of the interior design.
      “The departure lounge becomes a smooth transition between the Paris that we are leaving and the plane that is going to take off.”
      The mural is applied to perforated sheets and wraps around the walls above the windowsThe space also features a mural inspired by the work of French painter Sonia Delaunay that sits above the windows, which overlook the runways and allow views of planes taking off and landing.
      This fresco also references symbols used in airport signage and carries similar rounded motifs to the ones present in the retro-style seating and lighting.
      Rounded elements in furniture, lighting and decor reference the design of the 1960s and 1970sCharles de Gaulle Airport, also known as Roissy Airport, is the French capital’s principle airport.
      Other airport-related projects published on Dezeen include the cosy remodelling of an airport in Colorado, USA by Gensler and an airport that contains the world’s tallest indoor waterfall by Safdie architects.
      Images are courtesy of Chzon studio

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