The designer said it best when he described, Electric, the new cultural platform in Paris as follows: “If Alice in Wonderland had liked rock this is where she would have spent her days and nights.”
Mathieu Lehanneur’s description of his design for Electric, which is already an event in itself, sparks more than a little curiosity.
Electric is a 1 000 square-metre penthouse in Paris for which Lehanneur has devised a canopy of sound – suspended between heaven and earth – with electrical braids that emerge like a pitch-black tree.
A venue that is said to never sleep, Electric is as impressive by day as it is magical by nights.
Electric contains a lounge interspersed with soundproofed modules and an 80 square-metre terrace. The space is equipped with mixing concoles and a ballroom floor. Visitors are also treated to a new perspective over Paris, integrating the ring road as a perpetually moving graphic foreground that faces the metal mesh of the Eiffel Tower.
At lunchtime, Electric turns into en ephemeral restaurant while it makes way for a lounge or a club at dusk (‘til dawn).
The space, which Lehanneur designed with architect Ana Moussinet, can also be customised with video projections and various optional layouts.