The Restaurant of the Opera Garnier, which opened last July, comprises a bar and a room accessible from the ground floor, together with a mezzanine and a lounge area. This restaurant forms a successful contrast between the morphological shapes drawn by architect Odile Decq and Charles Garnier’s classical arrangement.
A continuous shell of moulded in white plaster
Odile Decq has drawn a corrugated glass façade, designed as a veil that floats slightly behind the pillars. Just held by a 6 metres blade of steel at the top and the bottom, maintained by a few stainless steel rods on the higher ledges, the effect is stiking. Invisible from the street, this facade nevertheless constitutes an invitation to discover the inner space which asserts its presence through a strong chromatic signature. A welcoming red creates a contrast between the morphological shapes of Odile Decq and Charles Garnier’s classical arrangement. This creates a contrast of materials and periods, but also a continuity of the morphology proposed by Odile Decq. The inside space is organised by means of a mezzanine positioned like a vessel and engineered as a single, continuous plane that assembles and unifies the various areas of the restaurant. The fine columns placed on the ground next to the stone pillars are rising in one delicate motion up to the railings of the mezzanine whilst forming its underside. It is a shell made of white moulded plaster, whose perception is highlighted by a built-in lighting system.
A composition principle born out of a set of constraints
One of the constraints imposed by the nature of the building, listed as a French Historic Monument, was the impossibility to alter the existing structure - the walls, the pillars, and the dome – so that to ensure the whole project was potentially reversible. Odile Decq states: When I first presented this project to the Historic Monuments authorities, I discovered that this building had not been touched since its completion by Charles Garnier and was regarded as a preserved item. However they were very concerned about the fact that I intended to close up the space and create a floor that had not previously existed. This main constraint of not tempering with the existing structure made me think about a corrugated glass facade behind the columns and it is then that we began to go around the pillars to design the mezzanine. We wanted to get closer to the outside in order for the mezzanine to be near the street front and they wanted it to be moved back in order to show the pendentive dome and its keystone. The project therefore resulted from this negotiation. Once they understood we were going to work without altering the stone, the Ministry of Culture and Historic Monuments considered that this project was to become an exemplary one. This principle of composition thus results from a set of constraints.
A technique of joint production
Beyond a relatively traditional design using sketches and scale models studies, the project was modelled in 3D to provide the company who made the shell on location with 2D sections of the 3D model. Odile Decq explains: For this project, we had to have light foundations upon which a metal structure was to rest. For the shell, we worked with the sprayed plaster technique. It is a mixed system which includes previously moulded parts and parts made by hand on location and mounted on a shaped metal textile on which plaster is being sprayed. We made 3D models but the building company only wanted 2D plans. Therefore, we produced a multitude of sliced sections. When you operate in an industrial context, as is the case for Franck Gehry and the coatings he uses, the machine is the one that does the cuts and makes the most out of the material. But when you work in a traditional way, as is our case, everything is hand-crafted, which requires excellent professionals.
A subtle use of geometry
Beyond the bar and lounge area, the composition of the room is being designed with a subtle use of geometry which creates different atmospheres. The design of the tables, based on trapezoidal shapes, enables to arrange them into interesting combinations, tables for two, four and six people up to larger groups. Odile Decq says: what interested me was to provide diverse spaces to make people say: well, I would like to book such or such space because this is where I wish to dine.
Virtual data, a matter for architects
More generally Odile Decq’s thoughts on digital issues are clearly separating the real world from the virtual one: today everything goes through digital tools and we use them a lot. We started working very early on with these tools, by end of the 1980s. I have always believed in them. But what I explain to my students is that the virtual space should not be a copy of the representations of the traditional one. There is no top nor bottom, front or back, and this is based on the question of the organisation of space. However this question is still puzzling me and always will. Take the video game, for instance. There, the architecture is outrageously commonplace and describes a nostalgic and romantic world, a past world, not a future one. In Alphaville people designed normal buildings but nobody focused on building a new world. Only a few films such as Matrix have questioned how to articulate one space according to another. Now that we have become used to this, we are back to a form of banality that architects can challenge with proposals, provided they think things through.
Pascal Terracol
Site: www.opera-restaurant.fr/fr
Published in the Digitalarti Mag #7.
Digitalarti Mag, the international digital art and innovation magazine.
Read the magazine for free online.
version Fr
RSS Feeds
Post new comment