TRIPTYQUE ARCHITECTURE + PHILIPPE STARCK
VILLA M TAKES AMAZON TO PARIS WITH TROPICAL BUILDING DESIGNED BY FRENCH-BRAZILIAN TRIPTYQUE ARCHITECTURE, WITH ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION OF THE SPACES SIGNED BY PHILIPPE STARCK, VILLA M AIMS TO CREATE A NEW PACT BETWEEN CITIES, NATURE, AND HEALTH. A naturalistic manifest: this is the definition of Villa M, a mixed-use complex located in Boulevard Pasteur, in the Parisian borough of Montparnasse. The program, imagined by Thierry Lorente and Amanda Lehmann of Groupe Pasteur Mutualité, is a mixed use building including a Hotel by Paris Society, a coworking, and a dynamic healthcare-focused center. Its architecture stands out with its living building, whose geometry is formed by metallic structure beams, conceived to house medicinal herbal plants, fruit trees, and medium to large sized perennial species. Designed as an exoskeleton, the building has a minimalist, light look, composed by prefabricated pieces as in a building game.
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“The edifice itself is the support for this vertical garden, which will grow and occupy the entire façade, turning the building into a vertical, medicinal forest, and becoming the main architecture,” explains Olivier Raffaelli, Triptyque partner and architect designer of Villa M. In addition to the reintegration of nature to the city through architecture, the living-building contributes with sustainability, since it collaborates with the thermal comfort and, therefore, with the building’s energetic efficiency. “We have explored all of the available surfaces to potentialize the greenery and to avoid energy and carbon waste,” explains Gui Sibaud, Triptyque partner and architect designer of Villa M. The environmental responsibility is also present in the basic and organic material choices, proposing a low-tech architecture.
