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      Atelier L2 creates modular wooden interiors for Ateliers des Capucins

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      Rennes studio Atelier L2 has installed 20 wooden boxes as modular units for shops, exhibitions and hospitality businesses inside Ateliers des Capucins, a covered square in a 19th-century arsenal in Brest, France.The Ateliers des Capucins has been shortlisted for a Dezeen Awards 2020 in the large workspace interior category.
      The studio’s brief was to design a number of shells in order to create an interior street with two floors inside the historical arsenal building, covering 5,000 square metres.

      Top: the project is located inside the 10,000 square-metres former arsenal. Above: Units with gabled roofs are slotted into the ceiling
      Atelier L2 used laminated veneer lumber (LVL) for the shells, which were designed to stand out against the metal structure and pitched glass roof of the 10,000 square-metres Ateliers des Capucins.

      Each wooden shell measures between 150 and 400 square metres, with some of the concept stores in the space using more than one.

      Some facades are as tall as 13 metres
      “In this way, the client would be able to find buyers who could convert each ‘box’ to complete the cultural and service offer,” Atelier L2 co-founder Pierre Lelièvre told Dezeen.
      The boxes are a permanent fixture of the Ateliers des Capucins – which functions as a large, covered market space – and can’t be moved.
      “Even though their appearance suggests it, the ‘boxes’ are absolutely fixed and cannot be moved under any circumstances,” Lelièvre said.
      “Their technical and structural complexity does not allow such flexibility. They are indeed equipped with all the necessary networks to host any kind of activity: exhibitions, restaurants, offices, breweries, co-working.”

      Laminated veneer lumber was used for the facades and floors
      The studio chose to use LVL made of spruce veneers for the structure of the facades and the floors, which span 10 to 14 metres, as it allowed them to create the units with as little impact on the existing building as possible.

      Studio VDGA lines office in India with curving walls of honeycomb cardboard

      “The entire design of the project was thought out with respect for natural resources,” Lelièvre explained.
      “The facing of the facades is made of spruce, the internal bracing uses gypsum boards and the insulation is made of wood wool. The floor boxes are ballasted with aggregates.”

      The wood stands out against the 19th-century building
      Windows were inserted into the facades of the wooden shells, to make them resemble many smaller houses inside the bigger building.
      The ceiling height of the huge hall space means some of the boxes have facades that reach as high as 13 metres, and gabled roofs that have been slotted into the ceiling.

      The units are used for retail spaces, offices and more
      “The use of wood was a way for us to stand out against the existing building, which is entirely made of stone and metal, while also giving an ephemeral side to our layout,” Lelièvre said.
      “We wanted to give the feeling that our project was simply set down in this historical and remarkable setting.”
      Atelier L2 is based in Rennes and was founded by Julie de Legge and Pierre Lelièvre.
      Also on the shortlist for the large workspace interior category are the monochrome interiors for KCC Office in a former factory, and The Audo hotel in Copenhagen that doubles as a showroom.

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      Luke Edward Hall stirs print and colour inside Hotel Les Deux Gares in Paris

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      A clashing mix of pea-green walls, leopard-print furnishings and candy-striped beds feature in this hotel that British designer Luke Edward Hall has completed in Paris.Hotel Les Deux Gares is tucked down a narrow street in Paris’ 10th arrondissement, set between two of the city’s major train stations – Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est.

      The hotel’s entrance lobby. Top image: one of the hotel’s olive-green guest bedrooms
      The five-storey building had been left vacant for a number of years, but when Luke Edward Hall was brought on board to design the interiors, the focus wasn’t on making the rooms seem more contemporary.

      Hall instead set out to fashion an “anti-modern” aesthetic that nodded to a Paris of the past.

      Chintzy wallpaper and leopard-print furniture decorate the lobby
      “I love listening to stories from the past and feeling as though I’m entering another, more elegant era,” explained Hall, who is based in London.
      “I always begin my projects by leafing through old books and magazines; then, I visit galleries and museums. I allow myself the time to dream and invent stories.”

      Breakfast and coffee is also offered to guests in the lobby
      The hotel is entered via a vivid lobby, where Hall has created a riotous collision of pattern and colour. The lower half of the walls have been painted pea-green, while the upper half has been covered in chintzy, pale blue wallpaper with a maroon-coloured motif.
      Black-and-white chevron flooring runs throughout.

      Headboards have a candy-striped pattern
      Guests can sit back on the room’s plush sofas – one of which is completely upholstered in leopard print fabric, the other is cobalt blue with bright-red fringing. There’s also a couple of striped pink-satin armchairs arranged beneath a portrait that Hall painted himself.
      “I really wanted this space to feel above all joyful and welcoming and alive, classic but a little bonkers at the same time,” added Hall.

      Luke Edward Hall has added illustrations to the bedrooms’ lampshades
      This bold palette continues upstairs in the forty guest bedrooms, which have been painted sky blue, violet or olive green.
      Each room features geometric carpeting, a candy-striped headboard and a canary-yellow armchair and pouf created bespoke by Hall.
      The designer has also personalised the reading lamps above the bedside tables with sketchy doodles of martini glasses, the Eiffel tower and different French words.

      Bathrooms in the hotel are equally bright in colour
      Even the hotel’s gym boasts graphic red-and-white checkerboard flooring and floral wallpaper from Swedish homeware brand Svenskt Tenn.

      Hoy hotel is designed to be a calming refuge at the heart of Paris

      Breakfast can be enjoyed down in the lobby, or across the street from the hotel in Cafe Les Deux Gares which Hall also designed.

      The gym features floral wallpaper and checkboard flooring
      Intended to feel much like a traditional Parisian eatery, the space has been finished with stripy seating banquettes and wooden bistro chairs from Thonet.
      Vintage exhibition posters have also been mounted on the walls in a wink at the fact that the city’s cafes were once hotspots for “social and cultural exchange”.
      The cafe is topped by a tortoiseshell-effect ceiling painted by local artist Pauline Leyravaud.

      The hotel’s cafe across the road boasts a tortoiseshell-effect ceiling
      Hotel Les Deux Gares is the first large-scale interiors project by Luke Edward Hall, who set up his self-titled design studio in 2015.
      Other spots to stay around the French capital include hotel Hoy, which has TV-free rooms and an in-house yoga studio so that guests can escape the chaotic hustle and bustle of Paris’ streets.
      Photography is by Benoit Linero.

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      Villa Cavrois serves as backdrop to Muller Van Severen exhibition

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      Belgian design duo Muller Van Severen is exhibiting a selection of their furnishings amongst the rooms of Villa Cavrois, a modernist 20th-century villa near Lille, France.The exhibition, called Design! Muller Van Severen at Villa Cavrois, will see Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen present both new and old pieces from the oeuvre of their eponymous studio, which was founded in 2011.
      It comes as part of the year-long programme of events that Lille and the wider Lille Metropole area are hosting as the designated World Design Capital for 2020.

      Villa Cavrois is situated northeast of central Lille in the commune of Croix and was built between 1929 and 1932 by the French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.

      The villa was originally designed as a family home for Paul Cavrois, a successful textile manufacturer, but during the second world war was occupied by German soldiers and turned into barracks.

      It was eventually abandoned and became subject to vandalisation, falling into such a severe state of neglect that it was threatened by demolition in the late 1980s.
      The French state ended up purchasing the villa in 2001 and carried out extensive renovation works to return the building to how it originally appeared in 1932. It then opened to the public in 2015.

      When it came to hosting their own exhibition at Villa Cavrois, Muller Van Severen wanted their furnishings to seamlessly fit in with the modernist grounds and interiors rather than appear as “strange entities”.
      “Time becomes irrelevant in this project,” the pair explained.
      “We want to create the poetic feeling that our objects could originate from the same time as the building. In the same way that the building itself feels very contemporary.”

      One room in the villa that’s lined with green-grey tiles of veiny marble is dressed with Sofa Cavrois, a furnishing that Muller Van Severen has designed specifically for the exhibition.
      The sofa – which is the first the duo has ever designed – curves upwards at two points, merging the shape of a standard chair and a chaise longue. To emphasise its sculptural form, the sofa is upholstered in bright sea-green linen.

      Muller Van Severen constructs Alltubes furniture series from rows of aluminium pipes

      A couple of the Muller Van Severen’s glossy, enamel-topped Emaille tables are also dotted throughout the room.

      Another mint-coloured room with wooden parquet flooring is dressed with the Strangled Rack from the duo’s Future Primitives collection, which comprises two intersecting shelves.
      Muller Van Severen’s Duo seat and lamp, which both boast red tubular framework, is presented just in front of the room’s huge marble-lined fireplace.

      One large maroon-red room displays shiny silver pieces from Muller Van Severen’s recent Alltubes collection, which is crafted from welded rows of aluminium pipes.
      Smaller spaces such as the villa’s kitchen, which features checkerboard floors, is decorated with a couple of brightly-hued Chair 2 models.

      The gridded wire daybeds and rocking chairs that Muller Van Severen originally created for Solo House, an architect-designed holiday home in Spain, are dotted across Villa Cavrois’ yellow-brick terraces outdoors.
      Some of the duo’s smaller homeware accessories are also included in the exhibition – for example, one office-like room features their stainless-steel Bended Mirror #3.

      Design! Muller Van Severen at Villa Cavrois will be showing until 31 October 2020.
      Villa Cavrois isn’t the only building by Robert Mallet-Stevens to become a public attraction. Villa Noailles in the French commune of Hyeres, which Mallet-Stevens designed in 1923, is now an arts centre.
      June of 2019 saw designer and Dezeen Awards judge Pierre Yovanovitch overhaul Villa Noailles’ gift shop, brightening up surfaces by painting them salmon pink, cobalt blue and buttery yellow.
      Photography is courtesy of Fien Muller.

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      Stéphanie Livée's interiors for Hotel Le Sud are an homage to the south of France

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      White walls, stripey furnishings and colourful ceramics feature in this hotel on France’s Côte d’Azur, which interior architect Stéphanie Livée has designed to reflect the region’s laid-back ambience.Hotel Le Sud is situated in Juan Les Pins, a charming town on the Côte d’Azur recognised for its sandy beaches and seafront promenades lined with eateries and boutiques.
      This setting became a key point of reference for Paris-based interior architect Stéphanie Lizée, who was tasked with designing the hotel’s 29 guest rooms, bar and terrace.

      “I am native to the region, southern blood runs in my veins,” Livée told Dezeen.

      “We have revisited the stylistic codes of the south with subtlety: the sandstone, the terracotta, the stripes, the rattan, interact with objects found in the surroundings and custom-designed furniture, mostly made by local craftsmen,” she continued.
      “The spirit of the South is here both revisited and modernized, without ostentation or caricature.”

      Paved flooring inlaid with jagged offcuts of stone has been paired with white-painted walls in the hotel’s bar.
      Wicker chairs run down one side of the room, while on the other is a series of ornate wire-frame seats dressed with floral yellow seat cushions.

      A stripey orange seating banquette has been set against one peripheral wall, where French artist Franck Lebraly has created a small mural.
      It depicts a trio of arched windows looking out across the ocean, with summer-themed paraphernalia like lemons, wine bottles and plant pots nestled on their ledges.

      Hoy hotel is designed to be a calming refuge at the heart of Paris

      Other surfaces in the bar have been punctuated with rounded niches which display an array of second-hand ceramics found in the local area.

      Stripey and cane furnishings appear again on the hotel’s outdoor terrace, where guests can sit and enjoy their breakfasts.
      A pair of chunky, orange-striped chairs also feature in the lobby, which is anchored by a grooved timber concierge counter.

      The colours applied in the guest rooms upstairs take cues from the wider cultural context of southern France.
      Stéphanie Livée became particularly interested in hues used by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, who spent several summers creating portraits and ceramics in French Riviera towns like Juan Les Pins, Antibes and Cannes.

      “The series of plates exhibited at the Picasso museum in Antibes guided me in choosing and matching the colours of the rooms – terracotta, Klein blue, pine green, yellow,” explained Livée.
      “The spirits of Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Matisse and the ceramists of Vallauris are still very much present in this radiant and amazing part of the country, which has so inspired grand artists in the mid 20th century.”

      Bands of yellow, orange, emerald and pine-green paint have been created just beneath the rooms’ ceilings, matching the stripey throws that have been laid across the beds.
      Terracotta tiles have then been used to line the vaulted doorways that lead through to the rooms’ showers, which are screened off by blue-striped curtains.

      Paint-splattered or fish-print plates have been used as decor, as well as earth-toned vases. Some of the pieces in the rooms were designed by Livée herself, including the wavy-edged wooden side tables.
      More illustrative details by Franck Lebraly also pop up – streaks of paint have been applied around the curvy headboards and the signs that denote room numbers have also been hand-painted.

      Stéphanie Lizée set up her eponymous studio in 2017. Her Hotel Le Sud project joins a roster of design-focused hotels across France – others include Hoy, which is designed to be a calming “hideaway” from the hustle and bustle of Paris’ city streets, and Le Coucou, a ski-in-ski-out hotel nestled amongst the snow-capped peaks of Meribel.

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      Timothee Mercier transforms rural French farm building into home for his parents

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      Architect Timothee Mercier of Studio XM has converted a ruined farm building in France into  an “intimate refuge” for his parents. MA House is located in Vaucluse, a picturesque part of southeast France that boasts vineyards, lavender fields and quaint villages. It takes over an old farmhouse on a plot of land that architect Timothee Mercier’s […] More

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      John Whelan adorns Paris' Nolinski restaurant with art-deco details

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      Gold-leaf “sunbursts” and mirrored panelling feature in this art deco-style Parisian restaurant, which British designer John Whelan has stirred with 1970s-inspired details. The restaurant is set within the five-star Nolinski hotel in Paris’ first arrondissement, just a short stroll from the Musée du Louvre, and Jardin des Tuileries. It had previously featured a mixture of […] More

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      Casa Santa Teresa is a Corsican holiday home with unspoilt ocean views

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      Amelia Tavella Architects has transformed a ruined 1950s residence on Corsica’s coastline into a light-filled holiday home with simply furnished interiors. Casa Santa Teresa is located near Corsica’s capital, Ajaccio, and is nestled along the Route des Sanguinaires – a rugged strip of coastline dotted with villas and upscale hotels. The 400-square-metre house was originally […] More

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      Hoy hotel is designed to be a calming refuge at the heart of Paris

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      TV-free guest suites and an in-house yoga studio are some of the ways that hotelier Charlotte Gomez de Orozco has tried to channel a sense of serenity inside this Parisian hotel, which is decked out in natural hues. Situated in Paris’ ninth arrondissement, Hoy has been designed to be a “true hideaway” from the hustle […] More