A naturalist architectural manifesto. Villa M by Triptyque Architecture, Philippe Starck
28/06/2022.
[Paris] France
metalocus, ANNA CLARA BARROS
metalocus, ANNA CLARA BARROS
Project description by Triptyque Architecture, Philippe Starck
Designed by french-Brazilian Triptyque Architecture, with architectural design and art direction of the spaces signed by Philippe Starck, Villa M aims to create a new pact between cities, nature, and health.
A naturalistic manifest: this is the definition of Villa M, a mixed-use complex located in Boulevard Pasteur, in the Parisian borough of Montparnasse.
“We designed Villa M as a naturalist architectural manifesto: that is, a building of a new era, where man is no longer opposed to nature and the living."
Olivier Raffaëlli and Guillaume Sibaud, Triptyque Architecture, Architects and designers of Villa M.
"Villa M is a bubbling, honest, and warm place, where life is good and beautiful, and where it is good to live and eat well. Throughout the restaurant and the bar, fertile surprises, hidden places, and mental games arouse curiosity and guide the gaze of visitors, reminding them that intelligence is one of the most beautiful symptoms of humanity."
Philippe Starck, Architectural Design and Art director of the spaces of Villa M.
The program, imagined by Thierry Lorente and Amanda Lehmann of Groupe Pasteur Mutualité, is a mixed-use building including a Hotel by Paris Society, a coworking, and a dynamic healthcare-focused centre.
"We could not conceive a building dedicated to health and mutualism without including a notion of hospitality, welcome, hotel business. Mutualism implies sharing."
Thierry Lorente, Villa M Concept Creator and CEO of Group Pasteur Mutualité.
"We are guided by the well-being of caregivers, to best serve these professionals who follow a vocation from the start, but who experience difficulties and suffering."
Amanda Lehmann, Villa M Concept Creator and Joint General Director of Group Pasteur Mutualité.
Its architecture stands out with its living building, whose geometry is formed by metallic structure beams, conceived to house medicinal herbal plants, fruit trees, and medium to large-sized perennial species.
Designed as an exoskeleton, the building has a minimalist, light look, composed of prefabricated pieces as in a building game.
Philippe Starck was born in 1949. From his childhood spent beneath the drawing tables of his airplane building, aeronautic engineer father, he retains a primary lesson: everything should be organised elegantly and rigorously, in human relationships as much as in the concluding vision that presides over every creative gesture. His absolute belief that creation should be used and enjoyed by all sees him relentlessly endeavouring to do well, right down to the tiniest detail.
But years later has he really left his first improvised office? According to him, not completely. “Ultimately they were children’s games, imagination games, but thanks to various skills, especially engineering, something happened. I’m a kid who dreams and at the same time I’ve got that light-heartedness and gravity of children. I fully accept the rebellion, the subversion and the humour.”
Starck first showed interest in living spaces while he was a student at the Ecole Nissim de Camondo in Paris, where in 1969 he designed an inflatable house, based on an idea on materiality. This revelation bought his first success at the Salon de l’Enfance. Not long afterwards, Pierre Cardin, seduced by the iconoclastic design, offered him the job of artistic director at his publishing house.
“My father was an aeronautical engineer. For me it was a duty to invent”.
Philippe Starck
Inventor, creator, architect, designer, artistic director, Philippe Starck is certainly all of the above, but more than anything else he is an honest man directly descended from the Renaissance artists.