The Institut Français asked PCA to create a new work environment. Rather than a simple interior design project, this new site needed a spirit of contemporary creation.
With that purpose in mind, PCA sought to understand the essence of the institute’s activities and came up with the idea of a global network of creation. The figure of the network served as a guide to the architectural project.
PCA collaborated with the Franco-Brazilian artists Detanico and Lain to develop a graphic system transforming cultural vacabulary into motifs of rhizomatic structure. Printed on the floor, this network spreads throughout the various levels, departments, and on the glass partitions, providing privacy while allowing good luminosity.
The collaboration project is structured around 5 elements :
- entrance: the Institut Français logo in the double-door entrance, made out of neon lights, floods the threshold in blue light.
- reception desk: the 1.0.3 collective has designed an installation with a cloud of screens which refer to the multiplicity of the constant activity of the 100 branches of the Institut Français in the world.
- visitor reception: artists Detanico & Lain have designed a graphic work based on key words from culture, art, writing, cinema, knowledge, creation, etc. The graphic motif is repeated on each floor as a print on the carpets and on the glass partitions.
- meeting rooms: Alain Bublex has created a landscape using two of his works from the ‘‘Paris Aire Métropolitaine’’ series.
- ground floor hall: designed as a temporary exhibition space open to all the users of this office complex, artists who have received support from Institut Français will show their work on the patio windows. For the first season, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil will be displaying a very large format reconstitution of two works from the ‘‘Black Out’’ series, Rome and Istanbul.