Pathe Foundation Building in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé HQ in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

Pathe Foundation Building in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

Pathe Foundation Building in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

 

Attention all archi-film buffs! Renzo Piano has recently built the new headquarters for the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé in Paris, France and what an impressive HQ it is. Looking like an extra-terrestrial spaceship from a 1960’s sci-fi flick, the building has been designed to preserve Pathé’s historic film archive and to promote future cinematographic art. And whoa, this giant sci-fi alien of a building does just that! Housing copious amounts of century old nitrate-film, this beauty is a self-confessed ‘organic creature’ that peeks out of it’s courtyard cage like some vast, unknown archi-worm.

Replacing an existing cinema in the XIII arrondissement, the new foundation also houses numerous exhibition spaces for both permanent and temporary collections, a seventy-seat screening room and a really sweet penthouse office space. Enclosed within a transparent skin of glass and steel cladding, the structure surprisingly improves it’s neighbour’s access to daylight.

 

Related Post: Deliciously Curvalicious.

 

Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé HQ in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé HQ in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé HQ in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé HQ in Paris by Renzo Piano | Yellowtrace

 

Although it may look like a foreign object, docked and ready to be shot back into outer space, the HQ has been moulded to it’s context, allowing it to have a pretty minimal building footprint and allowing the neighbours to claim back a bit of a backyard.

In contrast to the organic UFO-like exterior, the internal structure has been finished with light timber floors, walls and shelving units, creating a warm and comfy workspace. Left visible within the interior, a series of arched timber ribs define the organic egg-shaped curve of the building, and create a soft regularity within the internal spaces.

Overall, I’m usually not a massive fan of blob architectures but in this filmic circumstance, it’s been done to a tee.

 

Related Post: Deliciously Curvalicious.

 


[Photography by Michel Denancé © Renzo Piano Building Workshop.]

 



About The Author

Originally from Melbourne, Sam is a design-crazed architect currently living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark. Nuts for all things futurist and technology based, he is super interested in the evolving relationship between design/ architecture and the process of industrialised production - probably derived from childhood ambitions to make his own, personalised R2D2. Totally crazy about concepts like self-assembling architectures, Sam gets an unreal kick out of trying to understand the complexities behind any design. In his limited, non-design time he is currently learning Danish and practicing it shamelessly with the poor coffee barista down the road twice a day, every day.

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