Through the Looking Glass
Maud Armelle Anne Nguyen Huynh
/Sophie Julia Sills
/Katarzyna Maria Stachnio
The Cendrier Center is localised right by la Fondation Le Plaza, who’s cinema is being renovated. In order to animate this area and form an artistic pole in the city center of Geneva, the idea is to convert the current office spaces into dorms for students attending the Haute École d’Arts Appliqués of Geneva - HEAD.
One finds a building-sized house, where each occupant uses the spatial facilities on their own scale. The art students are constantly confronted with sharing, gathering and feeding their creativity : through an ongoing exhibition, atelier spaces, shared library and resting spaces. The notion of movement is key to the composition of the plans, and to the shared spaces. Private rooms are reduced to the essential, forcing the dwellers to go out and shape the common space, already choreographed through flows. The latter enter bedrooms through different materialities on the walls (semi-opaque and mashrabiya), only allowing the silhouette to enter these nooks.
At moments one gets to step outside the limits of the existing facade to catch a glimpse of the exterior, the sun kissing your skin or the rain dripping on your head.
This project was developed as part of studio elii.