Pathé Foundation by Renzo Piano // Paris, France.

Attention all archi-film buffs! Renzo Piano has recently built the new headquarters for the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé in Paris, France and what an impressive HQ it is. Looking like an extra-terrestrial spaceship from a 1960’s sci-fi flick, the building has been designed to preserve Pathé’s historic film archive and to promote future cinematographic art. And whoa, this giant sci-fi alien of a building does just that! Housing copious amounts of century old nitrate-film, this beauty is a self-confessed ‘organic creature’ that peeks out of it’s courtyard cage like some vast, unknown archi-worm.

Replacing an existing cinema in the XIII arrondissement, the new foundation also houses numerous exhibition spaces for both permanent and temporary collections, a seventy-seat screening room and a really sweet penthouse office space. Enclosed within a transparent skin of glass and steel cladding, the structure surprisingly improves it’s neighbour’s access to daylight.

Although it may look like a foreign object, docked and ready to be shot back into outer space, the HQ has been moulded to it’s context, allowing it to have a pretty minimal building footprint and allowing the neighbours to claim back a bit of a backyard.

In contrast to the organic UFO-like exterior, the internal structure has been finished with light timber floors, walls and shelving units, creating a warm and comfy workspace. Left visible within the interior, a series of arched timber ribs define the organic egg-shaped curve of the building, and create a soft regularity within the internal spaces.

Overall, I’m usually not a massive fan of blob architectures but in this filmic circumstance, it’s been done to a tee.