ically designed furniture : perfectly white spaces easy to repaint, black technical furniture easy to accessorize.

Built in 1965 by architects Paul Tournon & Olivier-Clément Cacouble, the Cité Internationale des Arts has since always been used for the arts. In more than 300 live-in workshops, the building welcomes artists from around the world year round, articulating both living and working spaces.

In December 2015, the ministry of Culture and Communication entrusted Jean Couvreur Design and NeM architects with the collaborative renovation of 3 of these live-in workshops.
Painters, sculptors, but also other visual artists and even musicians find their way in the varied artistic residency programs. The variety of domains implies a unique conception of spaces for each one. The international aspect of the Cité des Arts strengthens the need for living spaces able to meet with its residents’ many different customs and lifestyles.
The project presents itself as a neutral ground meant to be inhabited.
The volumes invite the resident to reconfigure freely as best to fit their use of space. A wide range of accessories are at hand to help them build their own living and working spaces.
As such, the bedroom may shift into a screening room. The workshop into an art gallery. The kitchen can be camouflaged behind a magnetic panel. The chairs, trestles and boards are easily piled up and stored away thus freeing the space entirely.
A dimmer equipped lighting and removable overhead fixtures allow them to either recreate the bright atmosphere of a roomy gallery or to give the necessary precision of a workstation lamp. The wall becomes the easel, the hand lamp a nightstand addition. And the canvases suspended to the ceiling structure redefine the space as a whole.
Project: Complete renovation
Location: Cité Internationale des Arts, Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, 75004 Paris
Surface: 3 apartments of 40 m2
Specific furniture:
- stackable chair, armchair, bed, trolley, trestle, suspension bar, shelves, lightning and accessories in black thermo-lacquered steel
- honeycomb sandwich trays and black Valchromat
Steel manufacturer: Atelier VDNB http://www.ateliervdnb.com/
Photographs: Matthieu Gauchet http://matthieugauchet.fr/