Kengo Kuma's plans for Paris
The Japanese architect’s new renderings introduce naturalism to France’s most philosophical quarter
Paris’s Left Bank was once the place where France’s iron-willed existentialists gathered, to argue that in life, simple existence precedes any softer sense of natural essence.
However, in the near future, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma could reintroduce a more rounded sense of nature to La Rive Gauche, with his plans for a wooden panelled, plant-heavy hotel for the capital.
“Our design strategy was to develop a sculptural form, as if shaped by natural erosion," explained the studio when it announced its plans. "Nature finds a place at the core of the scheme, translated in the intimate public garden where all senses are awoken."
That inner garden will be surrounded by not only a hotel, but also a youth hostel, a bar, restaurant, and business centre, and crowned with a roof garden.
Would Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir approve? For more on timber’s place within both old and new architecture get our book, Wood.