Recently, we have often discussed the renovation of historic buildings, and today we will consider another important and interesting example of this kind, showing that history can be correctly spoken about in modern language.
It all started when Groupe Lucien Barrière, a hotel and casino business, took over the management of the famous Parisian restaurant Le Fouquet. But, since the main area of their activity was still hotels, they decided to add a luxury hotel to the restaurant, for which they bought out an entire city block. To clarify: the quarter is located in the most expensive part of Paris, at the corner of the Champs Elysees and George V Avenue, opposite the Prince of Gaul and George V hotels. This place is popularly called the "golden triangle".
The main problem was that the buildings that form the quarter were built in different styles, and the customer wanted to get a single, recognizable, special image. The architect was also tasked with combining the courtyards into a new garden and creating a terrace overlooking the Parisian rooftops and the Eiffel Tower. To solve such important and complex tasks, the architect Edouard François was chosen, who, having reorganized the areas in the purchased buildings, was to create a single complex out of them. But the work on the interiors, in collaboration with Edouard François, was already done by another person - the designer Jacques Garcia.
Starting the renovation, Edouard François acted radically: he demolished the internal walls and changed the floor level in order to obtain a single hotel area with interconnected rooms and wide corridors. At the request of the customers, a spa area and a spacious courtyard garden were created.
But the main question - about the lack of a single external appearance of the hotel - remained open. Two of the buildings in the quarter - overlooking the Champs Elysees - belonged to the "style of Baron Haussmann" and, moreover, had the official status of architectural monuments. The other two, facing Avenue George V and rue Vernet and appeared only in 1980, imitated the classical Parisian architecture of the 19th century (this was the so-called neo-Ottoman style). Another building, built in 1970 with a brown glass facade on rue Verne, used to be a bank in general.
The client, in addition to the requirements described above, provided the architect with carte blanche and even agreed to a completely modern solution of the facades of buildings, if only they "worked" as a whole. Carte blanche, however, was not at all going to provide the Committee for the Protection of Monuments, for which the only possible solution was to design the facades in the "neo-Ottoman style" imitating the architecture of the 19th century. Which, of course, can be understood, since the entire "golden triangle" consists exclusively of historical (and pseudo-historical) buildings, and therefore it would be extremely difficult to successfully design a large complex there in the modern spirit.
However, Edouard François found a very bold, innovative solution: he quoted excellent examples of "Ottoman" architecture, but did it with completely modern means, scanning the 90-meter facades of the Fouquet restaurant and the ebb in the form created on the basis of the "scan" form of a new facade of gray concrete, changing in this case only the original depth of the reliefs and, of course, the color. For this, it was necessary to completely demolish the glass facade of the former bank - the only component of the quarter in the forms of modernism.
And then the architect added rectangular windows of the same size, very simple and laconic, completely not supporting the historical structure of the new facade in the "neo-Ottoman" style. Why is that? The architect explained this decision by the fact that when the buildings were merged due to the displacement of the floor levels, it was necessary to arrange the window openings in a new way, since the facades no longer corresponded to the internal structure of the complex. As a result, we got rectangular windows with the sky reflected in them against the background of a dark gray, somewhat gloomy "neo-Ottoman" facade. At night, a different effect is created: bright light flows from the windows, and the facade almost disappears: this is how the openings turn into particles floating in the air.
By the way, the Moulé-Troué technology, with the help of which the architect cast a new facade, was patented by him (from French this term can be translated as “cast and perforated”).
I really like the renovation project carried out by Edouard François: it once again confirms that there are no impossible tasks, and you can make a wonderful project, even being squeezed into a very strict "historical" framework in the very center of Paris - while pleasing the clients and the Security Committee monuments, as well as - most importantly - without changing yourself.
