L'Empreinte
Savigny-le-Temple, France
Périphériques

Vibrant Colors Magnetize Urban Community to Entertainment Venue

© Cécile Paris comme la ville

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Claire Downey

What the French call a suburb, or banlieue, is rarely a pretty garden development. Suburbs like Savigny-le-Temple, where French architects Périphériques have built their community center for new music and dance, are on the urban fringes of Paris and often have populations in difficulty. Along with a program that included a restaurant, recording studios, a concert hall for 300 people, two bars and a hiphop dance studio, the architects were asked to create a sense of entry into the town, an attractive billboard that functioned day and night.

Set along a highway, adjacent to the train station and a warehouse-style furniture store, L'Empreinte, needed to seduce a mobile community. During the day the restaurant and practice rooms are in operation, while in the evening a young, hip crowd comes to hear the latest music.

The multi-purpose program seems to be tailor made for Périphériques, which is not one architectural firm but three. Périphériques is the name the group uses when publishing books, curating exhibitions, and designing buildings whose programs lends themselves to an assemblage of parts. At the same time each team maintains their own office and projects. Interesting too is the fact that the principles of each firm making up Périphériques are partners in life as well as in business. If Dominique Jacob and Brendan MacFarlane have left Périphériques to devote more time to their personal projects (they designed the restaurant Georges in Paris' Centre Pompidou), the two remaining couples, Emmanuelle Marin-Trottin and David Trottin and Anne-Françoise Jumeau and Louis Paillard, are currently working together on a concert venue and the renovation of Paris' Habitat stores.

For L'Empreinte, the program was divided into three main parts: the restaurant, the concert hall, and the billboard, or entry hall. Each section was taken by one of the three teams to be designed separately. "The outcome," says Louis Paillard, "is not predetermined." Making this work takes flexibility, respect for each other's abilities and sophisticated digital imaging, to visualize the final result. It also allows the architects to create their own urban context with three volumes, of different forms and textures, that fit together into a compatible, if not homogeneous, whole. "What is interesting to us," explains David Trottin, "is the point where the buildings meet."

Marin + Trottin took charge of the front façade, or billboard—a corridor stretching the length of the project which includes offices and recording studios and from which all other spaces are accessed. The long, multi-colored façade creates an identifiable image for the center. It is not only beautiful, it satisfies the day and night visibility criteria of the program. At night, reflected color is thrown out onto the parking lot and the façade is visible from the highway. By day, visitors can see the movement within the building, encouraging them to enter, to participate. The translucent and transparent colored glass panels are set in a galvanized steel frame. "We didn't use anything," says Trottin, "that we couldn't order out of a catalogue." The concrete floor and steel ceiling, are typical of the inexpensive and easily maintained materials used throughout the project.

The concert hall, designed by Jacob & MacFarlane, is a soundproofed metal box, the exterior of which is covered in stainless steel panels which have been intentionally allowed to buckle or bubble, creating abstract reflections on the facade. Inside, the nine-meter high room, which has no fixed seating, is designed on two, simple perpendicular axes. One runs from bar to facing stage, while the other runs from projection room to screen. The central floor is recessed and surrounded by steps, allowing better visibility and free-for-all seating.

Finally, the concrete restaurant volume by Paillard+Jumeau is distinguished by a monotone camouflage pattern. To create the pattern, four lozenge shapes were positioned at various angles within the wood forms before the concrete was poured. Two different types of particle board give the concrete its mat versus polished finish. The pattern inspired the building's name—L'Empreinte—or imprint. The volume also includes a second floor dance studio. The restaurant takes advantage of the fact that the site backs up to a pond and green meadow. In the summer its folding glass doors open out onto a large terrace, a privileged place of calm.

The périphérique is what Parisian's call the perimeter highway that separates the city from it suburbs. Périphériques, the architects are more interested in assembling urban pieces. L'Empreinte, their first major collaborative project demonstrates that perimeter zones can be given a sense of coherence and community.

Formal name of building:
Café-Musiques

Location:
Savigny-le-Temple, France

Gross square footage:
1000 Meters squared

Total construction cost:
1,3 million Euros including VAT

Owner:
Savigny-le-Temple Town Council

Architect's firm:
Périphériques
4 passage de la Fonderie
75011 Paris