2004 – Hotel _ Bassin de l’arsenal Paris

 

 
Project Hotel in the new contemporary art district
Program Hotel and artist studios
Place Bassin de l’Arsenal Paris
Floor Area 40 000 m²

General Principles “One still needs chaos within him to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”Nietzsche (Zarathoustra). Instant fixed in time.

The new district of contemporary art consists of two buildings which « converse »: a video screen building dedicated to the contemporary art and a building which could represent a current architecture. This latter of these presented here, encloses a small Parisian block with two interior gardens. Aligned along two secondary streets, the building shapes the angle, and affirms its identity by propagating over the Bastille Boulevard (a tunnel is created for motor traffic). Its form starts as a Parisian building along the street and it gradually metamorphoses itself and breaks down in the canal when it encounters the other building part aligned on the other street.

It breaks the boulevard perspective and draws one’s attention towards the canal. The architecture climax happens when the two parts of the buildings (angle of the two streets) encounter, strike and hurt themselves. Architecture fixes their collision. Intruding parallelepipeds are added to the unit evoking the fixed birth of an unknown (metaphor of an artistic creation…?). « You need chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star » Nietzsche. But this meeting or collision is not only one place of collapse since it emerges a matter surplus which points towards the sky. This building must be perceived like an instant fixed in time.

It « discusses » with the first building which faces it behind a public place on other canal bank.