Director’s House

DATA Architectes renewed a brick building in Paris, featuring a large cylindrical structure which combines the transparency of glass with the lightness of the metal.

The existing house was in impeccable condition and DATA had merely to give it a good sand blasting to refresh the brickwork and canopy. The inside however was to undergo a complete makeover to thwart the constraints of a relatively small floor space.

It reinvented the volume of the building while keeping its proportions. It had good head room but to change the volume while maintaining the proportions was a key aim. DATA gutted the building to create a three floors exhibition space. The main room has been separated off by a wall to screen the stairwell, bathrooms, storage and technical rooms.

In the main space, a large cylindrical structure which combines the transparency of glass with the lightness of the metal, solves the main challenge of the project: freeing the ground floor as much as possible, inviting visitors to mount the stairs to the upper floors by offering a light and airy set design.

This architectural device has the double merit of adding scale instead and maintaining an important scenography without cluttering an already reduced space.