Client: Viparis
Design: Mathieu Lehanneur; Ana Moussinet
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Size: 1,000 sqm
Cost: Undisclosed
Completion time: 12 months
‘If Alice in Wonderland had liked rock music this is where she would have spent her days and nights,’ says French designer Mathieu Lehanneur of one of his latest projects, the interior of a new bar and nightclub on the penthouse floor of a seven-storey building near Versailles.
It seems that the gothic surrealism of filmmaker Tim Burton, who directed the 2010 film of Alice in Wonderland, was a big influence when it came to designing this scheme, in which sinuous black tree trunks made of fibreglass seem to have sprouted from floor before opening up into a canopy of twisted branches that supports lighting and sound equipment. It is, says Lehanneur, a canopy of sound suspended between heaven and earth’.
Inside, the 1,000 sq m main space is capacious, with 750cm-high ceilings and huge floor-to-ceiling windows which look out over Paris and give amazing views of the Eiffel Tower. In the centre of the main space, which has tinted oak floors, a circular bar is also made of fibreglass and is lit from above by a tangle of fluorescent tube lights.
Lehanneur worked alongside architect Ana Moussinet on the design of the club, which includes the huge central space, smaller sound-proofed rooms where different music is played, and an 80 sq m outdoor terrace.
The club, which Lehanneur calls ‘a venue that never sleeps’, is open for most of the day and night, so the space had to be versatile and as attractive during the day as it is after dark. ‘The venue needed to be able to function as everything from a concert hall to a lounge bar, accommodating from 50 people to 2,000, and from noon till 6am,’ says Lehanneur. ‘The challenge was not to create a beautiful and static place but a flexible one that could change according to the event or the time of day: a kind of magic box that takes on a different identity according to what is happening inside.’
During the day the space feels relaxed and informal – not dissimilar to a huge warehouse apartment. Loose furniture is arranged in clusters around the floor, with Brick sofas by Versus, Martino Gamper’s angular Arnold Circus stools and Tom Dixon’s Slab and Flash tables. In the evening, when the space becomes a nightclub, the furniture is stowed away to make room for up to 1,300 dancing revellers.
The look and feel of the space can be changed by configuring this furniture in different ways and through the use of video projections. Some spaces have been specifically designed to give music fans an immersive listening experience, while others give the reverse effect, with walls made of foam dihedrons coated in PVC absorbing sound and preventing reverberation so that partygoers can hear each other talk over the music. Says Lehanneur: ‘In order to achieve this we worked in close collaboration with acousticians to structure the spaces by the sound and perception of the vibrations.’
For Lehanneur, it was important to carefully consider the many different kinds of spaces required for the perfect night out at a club. The main space is designed for the kind of buzz you can only get from hundreds of people all dancing to the same music, but when this becomes too much there are plenty of places where you can go to chill out, such as a vestibule with walls are panelled in strips of white leather.
‘Just like a party venue, I wanted it to be the ideal place to meet,’ says Lehanneur. ‘I wanted people to be able to spot each other at the cloakroom, dance together in the main room, strike up conversation on the balcony, have a drink in the lounge… and then leave your telephone number in chalk on a blackboard in the toilets.’ Words by Jamie Mitchell
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