GSL Gallery takes over disused Parisian manufacturing unit with "punk" interiors

Weathered partitions and concrete flooring function on this design gallery that artistic collective The Guild of Saint Luke and structure agency Studio ECOA have arrange inside a former manufacturing unit in Paris.

Unfold throughout one storey and two mezzanines, GSL Gallery gives a combination of studio and exhibition area for the group of architects, artists and artisans that make up The Guild of Saint Luke.

The gallery occupies a disused manufacturing unit in Pantin, a neighbourhood in northeastern Paris with a rising arts and tradition scene.

In recent times, the constructing operated as a traditional automobile storage however was bought by artwork supplier and gallerist Hadrien de Montferrand throughout the pandemic with the intention of remodeling the positioning right into a gallery.

De Montferrand enlisted domestically primarily based Studio ECOA to hold out all the required architectural modifications and requested The Guild of Saint Luke (GSL) to steer the constructing’s design and develop into its first tenant.

“We have been charmed by the area and located the patina and uncooked partitions to be punk and by accident on-point,” GSL’s artistic director John Whelan informed Dezeen.

“Working in shut collaboration with Studio ECOA, we proposed a undertaking that retained all the rawness of the areas with very minimal design interventions,” he continued.

“We felt that it could be felony to intrude with the present temper, which is melancholic and eerily stunning.”

Studio ECOA restored the constructing’s facade and aluminium roof, in addition to preserving its unique concrete flooring.

Boxy storage items have been constructed on both aspect of the entrance door to type a corridor-like entrance to the bottom flooring, the place white panelling was added throughout the decrease half of the patchy, time-worn partitions to emulate the look of a typical gallery.

This ground-floor area shall be used to show a altering roster of avant-garde installations, which GSL hopes to finance through the use of the gallery’s workspaces to supply extra industrial tasks for design manufacturers.

“Industrial endeavours will assist to fund extra proactive ‘ardour tasks’, the place we’ll exhibit GSL’s personal designs together with designers and artists that we admire,” Whelan mentioned.

“Our chief motivation is artistic freedom, as we hope to supply installations that don’t essentially adhere to a industrial transient.”

The constructing’s two current mezzanines have been in the reduction of to create a central atrium, which pulls pure gentle into the gallery’s inside.

The decrease mezzanine now homes a hybrid live-work area the place GSL members or visiting artists can keep the evening.

This area is centred by a big Donald Judd-style picket desk and likewise accommodates a mattress, kitchenette and a toilet hid inside a mirrored quantity.

Further exhibition area is supplied on the secondary mezzanine that sits beneath the constructing’s roof, instantly underneath a sequence of expansive skylights.

Before now, GSL has largely specialised in hospitality interiors – restoring historic brasseries throughout Paris and devising opulent eating places equivalent to Nolinski close to the Musée du Louvre and Maison Francois in London.

“We hope that the gallery shall be an extension of the aesthetic that we try to develop, embracing new concepts however by no means abandoning the pursuit of magnificence,” Whelan defined.

“It seems like time to take action, as Covid has cleared and a temper of optimism in design has emerged. This bracing, minimal area feels nearly like a clear slate and invitations a mess of potentialities.”

Different current additions to Paris’s cultural panorama embody a significant extension of the Musée Albert Kahn by Kengo Kuma and Associates, which made room for a historic assortment of 72,000 images.

Elsewhere within the French capital, Bruno Gaudin Architectes simply accomplished a 15-year renovation of the Nationwide Library of France, incorporating numerous new circulation routes and public areas.

The pictures is by Oskar Proctor.