Thursday, October 27, 2011

LA MAISON CHAMPS ELYSÉES


Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées

Parisian hotel La Maison Champs Elysées spans two buildings, one dating from the Second Empire under Napoleon III, the other built more recently. Belgian fashion design house Martin Margiela, who won a competition to re-design the historical part of the building, created 17 hotel suites called the Couture Collection, a restaurant, a smoking room, a bar, and the reception area. The spaces, which opened this past summer, offer harmonious contrasts and touches of surrealism and marks the designer’s first foray into hotel interiors.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The Gilded Lounge suite is covered in wallpaper made from black and white photographs taken of the Second Empire-style Gilded Salon located on the hotel’s second floor.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The suite includes a WC with a library mural of books.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The three Lost Mouldings suites are subtly embellished with wooden moldings that start and finish at random. The monochromatic scheme is decorated in various shades of white, from very light gray to light beige. The salon and bedroom are separated by a central space with sliding partitions.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The Curiosity Case suite resembles a carbon cube, with black painted walls and black stained parquet oak floor. The atmosphere is both hushed and voluptuous.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The curtains are fashioned from black wool cloth with fine pinstripes reminiscent of the traditional fabric for a gentleman’s suit.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
In the lounge, a wall is devoted to a curiosities case that displays various objects and texts.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The pictures, objects and furnishings in the White Cover suite are draped with loose, white covers.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
There are five Margiela-designed Junior Couture suites, split over two levels. The hall, which includes the dressing room, leads to a staircase going down to the bed. The flooring, walls, and bed are done in layered silver birch.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Opposite the bed, an imaginary landscape has been specially printed on the wallpaper, and is reflected on the adjacent mirrored wall.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The configuration of white tiling with black grout in the bathroom has a graph paper effect.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
There are six Deluxe Couture suites designed by Margiela. The wall above the bed is highlighted by three squares of painted light, giving the illusion of sunlight streaming in from the adjacent windows.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The light beige wool carpet is printed with a red Persian rug trompe-l’œil beside the bed.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The White Lounge is just one of the enchanting public spaces that Margiela conceived.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Even the restaurant patio furniture is draped in white covers, and surrounded by lush plantings.
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
The hotel reception area is shaped like a mirrored prism. The floor is Pierre de Mareuil limestone flagstone with random black slate insets (“scattered as if by the wind”). Look carefully below the brushed stainless picture lights. They illuminate nothing, or what the hotel terms “missing paintings.”
Destination Design: La Maison Champs Elysées
Adieu!

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