In recent years, Paris retail institution
Galeries Lafayette has been working with
Amanda Levete on restoring and upgrading
its main space, with other outposts also
focusing on fusing contemporary design
with historic structures. Nowhere is this
more apparent than in the brand’s new ‘retail
laboratory,’ the careful reconstruction of a
1932 art deco bank building on Avenue des
Champs-Élysées. Overseen by Bjarke Ingels
and Jakob Sand at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG),
the new concept shop offers 6,800 sq m
of floor space over four storeys. BIG won a
competition for the project in 2016, in part
because of the architects’ desire to unite the
grandeur of the past with the fast-changing
demands of the present. It’s no longer enough
for a store to simply supply goods; consumers
need to be taken on a journey. ‘To decide
to create a new space of this magnitude with
an architect who has never designed a store
is very brave, perhaps even a bit foolhardy,’
says Ingels. The Danish architect rose to
the challenge, however, believing that the
department store has a new role in the
online age, that of an ‘urban agora’, a social
destination as much as a retail one. ‘Humans
are social beings – and more than ever we
need a forum for collective intimacy,’ he says,
‘somewhere we can’t get what we want just by
clicking on it, but where we can engage with
others in visually and physically stimulating
urban environments.’ BIG had a fine canvas
to work on, and it has created a series of
showstopping architectural interventions
that help pull the customer in from thestreet, starting with the glass tunnel that
leads off the glossy marble entrance hall.
There is also a new glass stairway, part of
a commitment to transparency, and views
through and across, all serving as enticing
lures to get deeper into the space. The first
floor is given over to emerging brands, with
a ring of perforated metal both uniting the
space and providing smaller, more intimate
areas. Above these are suspended glass rooms,
little vitrines that give views across the shop
floor. ‘These pavilions may change and
transform over time,’ says Ingels. ‘It makes
me excited to come back and find something
different.’ Shopping is a mainstay of cultural
life, and Galeries Lafayette and BIG are
committed to keeping things fresh by not
shutting out the city. big.dkBJARKE INGELS (RIGHT),
PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE
GLASS TUNNEL ENTRANCE
TO GALERIES LAFAYETTE’S
NEW FLAGSHIP STORE ON
CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES IN PARIS,
WHICH HOUSES AN EYEWEAR
WALL (THIS PICTURE)Architecture