Hèrmes Rive Gauche features three nine-metre high wooden pavilions made of ash laths, each housing the Hèrmes collections.

A fourth wooden structure lines the staircase leading visitors from the entrance into the former pool.

The floor of the pool area is covered with mosaic tiles.

Here are some more details from Hèrmes:

Hermès has entrusted the RDAI agency, which is reponsible for designing all the Hermès stores worldwide, with the design of a new space, singular and unexpected in Paris. Hermès is setting up shop in a swimming pool… An immense volume, empty. An impression more of space than of surface area. And now, at the end of a project that added but did not take away, the Lutétia swimming pool, in the heart of the Saint-Germain- des-Prés quarter of Paris, has metamorphosed into the first Hermès boutique on the Left Bank.

The architectural project led by Denis Montel and the teams at RDAI mixes contrasts and complementarities. It was imagined more in terms of volume than surface area, in m3 more than in m2. In the end, it is an intervention both radical and astonishingly gentle.

Listed as a Historic Monument since 2005, the swimming pool built in 1935 has a strong architectonic character and a compelling identity, that of Art Deco – it is in the spirit of its age. After its closure, the swimming pool underwent varied and diverse uses and was transformed. The challenge was to translate some of the values intrinsic to Hermès into space: heritage and modernity, savoir-faire and creation.

The project has a double aim. First of all to respect, conserve and reinterpret the architecture of the swimming pool.The only important modification was the covering of the pool by means of concrete composite floor slab supported by a light structure. Underneath, the pool has been integrally preserved. The facade, giving onto the rue de Sèvres, has kept its original appearance.

Then, to tell another story, one that is resolutely contemporary.This takes form through the appearance of three monumental ash huts which both disrupt the existing volumes and converse with them.The invasion of what was once the pool by these huts, flexible, light and nomadic, suggests the creation of houses within the house.

A change of scale, an invitation to wander, to drift, which produces a powerful magic… Everywhere the movements seem natural, they are fluid, rippling.The shimmering of the water that was once here is evoked in a subtle way in the tones of the mosaics, in the effects of the lights… What existed and what has been added converse in a strange harmony. They are whole, they are complementary.

The Entrance

At the foot of an elegant apartment building from the mid 1930s, the facade of the Hermès store is discreet.An entrance portico in the centre between two windows, nothing to hint at the surprise awaiting once through the doors…

The entrance is like a lightwell overturned, horizontal, which attracts one irrevocably towards the light at the back, towards what was the Lutétia swimming pool.The entrance to the store must function like a delicious trap into which the visitor lets himself slide, from crossing the threshold of the doors on the street until he reaches the swimming pool and its strange inhabitants, the huts.

To guide him, the perspectives are accentuated and modified by an imperceptible contraction, rather like the sides of the Médicis fountain in the Luxembourg garden. The lightly inclined ceiling, the walls curved and leaning inwards, covered with oak laths that leave recesses open as if floating in matter. An introduction full of mysteries inciting one to plunge into this new Hermès house.

The Huts

Four pavilions with an organic design, in which some will recognise familiar forms from the plant or animal world, or from childhood… Others will liken these huts, which occupy the volume of the swimming pool, to the nests of tisserin birds.These pavilions of different form and dimensions are constructed in ash wood. They are self-supporting structures that rest on a system of woven wooden laths (profile 6×4cm) with a double radius of curves. The documentation and three-dimensional drawing of the complex geometry of each hut was made possible by the computer script written for each one of them.

Rising to more than 9 m in height, they lean progressively, as if attracted by the skylights. The huts house the Hermès collections. They seem to have simply alighted on the ground, lending the project its nomadic dimension.

The fourth hut, which appears to be lying down, lines the staircase that naturally leads the visitor towards the pool and forms the link between the entrance and the open space of the swimming pool.

The Lighting

In such a volume, the lighting is crucial. The entire space is bathed in natural light that penetrates through the three large skylights above the atrium, softened only by a metal screen. At night the skylights are lit to avoid a “black hole” effect.

In order to avoid putting the spaces overlooking the pool that previously housed the changing rooms, in the shade, the effects had to be measured out, the contrasts that would otherwise have been too harsh attenuated. All the vertical panels are therefore also lightly illuminated.

Above photograph is by Bruno Clergue

The undulating walls in white plaster, running around the ground floor, are lit from above by LED tape with the light source hidden from view.

Above photograph is by Bruno Clergue

Lit from the interior, the huts appear as giant lanterns. A lighting device embedded in the floor, illuminates their vaults of latticed wood.

Each hut has a large chandelier composed of a double ring of suspended wood.The shelving is lit by integrated and invisible LED tape.

Above photograph is by Bruno Clergue

The Mosaics

The Lutétia swimming pool is a mineral world. The floors, the columns, the staircases are covered in mosaics, broken tiles or granito. The existing ornamental elements on the floor and the walls have been preserved and restored.

Through the play of this transformation, this world has discovered several new forms of expression…

Above photograph is by Bruno Clergue

In the entrance to the store, a mosaic carpet with a Greek motif (a nod to the flooring of the Hermès store at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré) welcomes visitors. Following this desire for coherence, the steps and risers of the large newly created staircase are in granito.

Adding to this refinement, the floors of rooms less visible to visitors (such as the fitting rooms, the bathrooms) have been worked in broken tiles. It is a means of writing these new spaces into the history of the swimming pool. The surface of the pool is adorned with a mosaic covering, whose texture and composition of ceramic and glass mosaic tiles evoke the movement of waves. Shiny and matt tesserae in different dimensions and in multiple colours and white gold seem to vibrate as one moves around. A random approach to the composition in graduated tones creates effects of depth and sparkle accentuated by the play of light.

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Called Move: Choreographing You, the exhibition charts the relationship between performance and visual art over the last 50 years and invites visitors to participate in the installations on show.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

The translucent paper-like structures, made of Tyvek, create partitions and help to direct visitors around the exhibition.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

Taking inspiration from origami and kites, the structures were developed in collaboration with London studio Kite Related Design.

Above photograph is by Stephen Citrone

The exhibition continues until 9 January 2011.

Photographs are by Gidon Fuehrer unless stated otherwise.

The following information is from the architects:

Move: Choreographing You

Move: Choreographing you is an exhibition of visual and performance art curated and hosted by the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank. The theme of the exhibition focuses on sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer through interaction with performers, visitors, and the pieces themselves.

AL_A was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery to do the interior spatial design and planning of the exhibition, as well as develop a multi-media archive in collaboration with interactive designers Unit 9.

The exhibition design was driven by the relationships between choreography and geometry, movement and form. Inspired by the photographic motion studies of the human body of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, we have created a collection of spatial dividers which are defined by a serial transformation of a single material: a sequence of folded oscillations of Dupont Tyvek.

The resulting translucent paper-like fabric ribbons, a counterpoint to the brutality of the building, rise and fall with undulating folds which simultaneously define themselves as way finding devices, partitions, suspended ceilings, and portals. These fluid spatial and formal transformations choreograph the movement of the visitor through areas of sculpture, film, archive and performance.

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The spatial configurations defined by our dividers are intended to embody two types of performative experience: public and private. In the public experience, the ribbons frame views, carve space, and lead visitors to a fluid and communal experience of the interactive objects and installations of Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Franz West, Franz E. Walther, William Forsythe, Christian Jankowski, and others.

In the private experience, the ribbons are used to enclose and define smaller more intimate spaces for introspective and singular experiences with the works of Isaac Julien, Dan Graham, Simone Forti, Tanya Bruguera, Lygia Clark and others.

While the expressive form of the ribbons was conceived as a choreography of material inspired by origami, the structure and bespoke detailing of the paper-like ribbons was inspired by those found in kites and was developed in close collaboration with fabricators Kite Related Design.

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Status: 2010
Client: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Location: London UK
Programme: Exhibition design for Move: Choreographing You, an exhibition of visual and performance art sculptures and installations which invite the visitor to become both participant and performer.
AL_A Team: Amanda Levete, Alvin Huang, Tanya Rainsley, Gemma Douglas

Called A Gust of Wind, the piece featured 300 curled pieces of Corian engraved with the words “Ideas Tray” and a series number.

At the end of the day they were given away to partners of the project and members of the public for use as paper trays.

The information that follows is from Paul Cocksedge:

A GUST OF WIND – An installation by Paul Cocksedge Studio for the London Design Festival.

24th September 2010 18:30-22h:00 London Design Festival V&A, Friday Late Event

Three hundred curvaceous pieces of Corian® will be exhibited for one day only as part of the V&A’s Friday Late Programme. The ‘pages’, which will be given away during the event, represent a stack of paper that has been blown into the air by a gust of wind. Each of these limited edition pieces is engraved and then handmade by Paul Cocksedge. They will function as paper trays, becoming a place for wandering paper to gather.

This installation is made possible through collaboration with the London Design Festival, V&A and DuPontTM Corian®.

Paul Cocksedge Studio is the internationally acclaimed design practice of partners Joana Pinho and Paul Cocksedge, based in London. The studio undertakes in-house design, commissions and consultancy work for a range of clients and sectors. Production ranges from bespoke manufacturing to licensing technologies. The Studio is dedicated to the creation of sophisticated, cutting edge products and installations.

Entitled Modern Primitives, the series was developed in collaboration with Italian fashion brand Fendi and forms the first part of a project to be concluded at Design Miami/ in December.

Here are some more details from Fendi:

FENDI and Aranda\Lasch present Modern Primitives
An installation combining technology, craftsmanship and tradition

FENDI consolidates its relationship with the world of Limited Edition Design by partnering with the New York based architectural studio Aranda\Lasch with a two-step project starting at Venice Biennale of Architecture in August 2010 and seeing its completion at Design Miami/ in December 2010.

At the Venice Biennale of Architecture, starting on August 26th, FENDI will be supporting the installation the architectural duo have been commissioned by the Pritzker Price Winner and Biennale Curator Kazuyo Sejima.

The installation, called Modern Primitives, explores technological sophistication with hand-crafted elegance.

Modern Primitives will be an installation composed of foam structures, derived by small primitive pieces connecting into larger ones that can be sat on, leaned against, held in one’s arms. This setting will describe a space of dialogue where events and conversations are conducted, recorded and broadcast.

The installation site will be located at the end of the Arsenale.

The result is a multiple level installation that will find its ultimate essence and completion in the Miami part that will embody and sublimate the world of design, fashion, art and architecture.

The project involved wrapping 45 km of tape about the posts over four days.

It was one of three projects awarded in the DMY Awards.

For Use/Numen represented Vienna Design Week at the event, which takes place in October this year.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Vienna Design Week Embassy presents

Tape Installation #5 at DMY, 09.-12.06.2010 / Tempelhof, Berlin

Although the Tape Installation is conceived as a kind of parasite, site specific object located at places like old attic, columns of a historical building, group of tries or an industrial concrete structure, due to location change of DMY a custom scaffolding construction had to be made. Therefore the installation appeared more like a captured UFO on the old Tempelhof Airport and less like a cocoon.

The installation was executed within four days (approximately 160 working hours) utilizing almost 700 conventional transparent tapes (45 km of tape).

The tendons of multiple layers of transparent adhesive tape are firstly stretched in between a construction. The following continuous wrapping of tendons results in a complex, amorphous surface through the process reminiscent of growing of organic forms.

The idea for the installation originates in a set design concept for a dance performance in which the form evolves from the movement of the dancers between the pillars. The dancers are stretching the tape while they move, so the resulting shape is a (tape) recording of the choreography.