Tribal Act is a historical tattoo and piercing parlor located in downtown Paris near the Republic Square in the 11th ward. Pioneering in piercing, Tribal Act has become the mecca of piercing, tattoo, and body transformations over the past decades, known nationally and worldwide.
The three owners Nicolas, Oliver, and Philippe have commissioned FREAKS to redesign the whole double-story space in order to reorganize their different services: jewelry shop, piercing, and tattoo working spaces.
The entire ground floor is now dedicated to welcome visitors in a warm and homey atmosphere where they can either shop for exclusive jewelry, read through magazines and tattoo artists' portfolios, or simply wait before their appointment.
Slightly modified with a cast concrete addition, the staircase now goes straight up to the upper floor where the sterilization room is staged in the center, wrapped in a transparent sheet of glass. The piercing room is located in a single space toward the backyard, while the tattoo rooms have been merged together into a big shared white space towards the street side. Tattoo artists coming from all over the world now practice in an adaptive space that they can easily modify and adjust to their needs thanks to three curtains that split the space in 2, 3, or 4 sub-spaces to create privacy cells.
FREAKS proposed to feature Flemish Primitive painter Hieronymus Bosch on the curtains to both illustrate humorously the tattoo and piercing practices, and also offer something very busy and captivating to look at while being tattooed for long, painful hours!
Furniture such as counters, glass displays, lightnings, and couches have been found in flea markets or second hand shops.
Tattoo and piercing shops are usually DIY customized and not that much into design; therefore, Tribal Act are once more pioneers by asking an architecture studio to design their working space and invent new devices, settings, and rules.
Photo Credits: David Foessel.
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