The connection between the two floors is made through a single staircase that improves its spatiality with the decision to demolish part of the slab inwards. The decision allows a large interior opening that provides greater visual amplitude and allows spatial continuity.
Towards the exterior, continuity has been given, from top to bottom, to all the shop windows, giving the sensation of exterior continuity in the interior.
Arquitectura-G previously designed the Nagoya store in Japan (opened in 2019) or the one in Stockholm, Sweden (in 2020), the headquarters of an old bank from the 1970s, inside which, after the robbery in 1973, the well-known term "Stockholm Syndrome" was forged.
Acne Studios Flagship Store in Paris by Arquitectura-G. Photograph by Maxime Delvaux.
Acne Studios Flagship Store in Paris by Arquitectura-G. Photograph by Maxime Delvaux.
Project description by Arquitectura-G
This branch of Acne Studios is located on Rue Saint-Honoré, in the lower part of a corner building. Inside, it has the typical structure of an artisan’s workshop house: the ground floor has reasonably high ceilings, while there is also a mezzanine-type space with a minimum ceiling height of 2.05 metres, where the family lived. Previously, the two floors were connected by a single staircase.
As a strategic decision, the intermediate floor structure was partially demolished, thereby creating a large opening that runs the length of the store. It eventually leads to the staircase that joins the two floors, and it frees up both of them; the mezzanine ceiling thus becomes the whole store’s ceiling. Also, the project seeks to forge a certain material continuity with the rest of the city: the Saint-Maximin stone used here, from a nearby quarry, is ubiquitous in Paris, and it has been used for everything from unremarkable residential buildings to the city’s most iconic monuments. The store’s façade was also covered with this stone, and it extends into the shop and creates a bold monolithic ambience since all the space is constructed in this one single material. The columns next to the new overhead opening are now two floors high, and they loom over the space almost like imposing urban infrastructure. The floor-to-ceiling windows, simple panes of glass slotted between the interior and exterior stonework, open the store out and into the city, thus sparking up a dialogue between the two.
