Hospitality Concept
MEO Paris
Café, coworking and community hub, a single place asked to hold three different rhythms across the day.
Project facts
- Location
- Paris
- Status
- Concept
- Role & scope
- BEDI DESIGN: Full-scope
The brief
One room, three rhythms
A café in the morning, a workplace through the day, a community space in the evening, asked of a single long room with a concrete structure, one glazed end and no possibility of dividing it permanently.
Three uses in one plan usually produce a room that serves none of them. The brief was to find the arrangement where each of the three feels intended rather than tolerated.
Concept
A long nave, furnished in three registers
The room is left as it is, the concrete columns, the depth, the single source of daylight, and the work is done entirely with furniture. Three registers run down its length: bar-height along the glazing for the morning, tables in the middle for the working day, low seating at the far end for the evening.
Planting marks the transitions instead of partitions, and the lighting is circuited so that the centre of gravity of the room moves across the day.
The plan does not divide the day. The furniture does.
What this covers
Full-scope concept, taken to the point where it can be costed and built.
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Programming
The three uses mapped hour by hour, and what each one actually needs from the room.
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Spatial strategy
Zoning by furniture and light rather than partitions, so the room stays one volume.
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Furniture and acoustics
Seating registers, planting and acoustic treatment developed together.
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Lighting design
Circuits that move the centre of the room from the glazing to the far end across the day.
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Identity and signage direction
How the place names itself, inside and on the street.
Delivery
A concept ready to be costed
The project stands at concept stage: the plan, the three registers, the material direction and the lighting principle are fixed, and the next step is a costed package.
The concrete structure is kept exposed throughout, it is the one thing the three uses have in common, and hiding it would have cost the room the character that makes the arrangement work.
The concept
Expertise applied