This new boutique, for fashion brand Hermes, has been designed by Paris-based Architects, RDAI, in a disused 1930’s swimming pool building. Serving as the company’s second largest store in the capital, the space has been opened up to create a contemporary shop to showcase Hermes’s new ‘La Maison’ furniture line. A wide staircase takes you to the former pool deck, complete with original mosaic flooring, where the architect has installed giant ash-wood latticed, funneled huts. These make the space seem less daunting and vast; “The invasion of what was once the pool by these huts, flexible, light and nomadic, suggests the creation of houses within the house”. “We don’t think of this as a new store,” says Hermès chairman and CEO Patrick Thomas. “We’re saying, ‘Welcome to our home.’”
See: http://www.elledecor.com/entertaining-travel/articles/herm-s-classic-revival
Images: http://www.dezeen.com/2010/12/20/hermes-rive-gauche-by-rdai/
