Ora Ito’s Eye-Catching parametric sculpture, like a tornado in a mindfully serene office environment. French designer Ora Ito has designed LVMH Media Division Office that is home to Le Parisien and Les Echos at 10 Grenelle in the 15th district of Paris. This bright unit spans 4 floors and is penetrated by a soaring, stunning staircase.
“I wanted the staircase to be the centrepiece of the building. This creature undulates in the space, shaping and pervading it. This huge half-whale and half-snake chimera, snatches you, swallows you up and spits you out at the right floor.” Ora Ito
An undoubtedly eye-catching parametric sculpture with a biomorphic structure, like a tornado in a mindfully serene office environment. The staircase surpasses the architecture. The offices are intentionally minimalist, calm and functional without extraneous decor.
The refined details are unobtrusive. The only visual surprise for collaborators and visitors is this huge body that rises through the building and lends itself to various functions in several spaces: reception area, partitioning, canteen and auditorium walls.
Ora Ito also designed the communal areas of the entire 10 Grenelle real-estate project, extending over more than 30,000 m2 and encompassing 30 levels including the unit dedicated to LVMH’s media division.
While the Yooma Hotel, produced in collaboration with Daniel Buren, opened before the summer and the completely revamped architecture of the new Pathé Wepler will be revealed shortly to Parisians, Ora Ito upholds a rare 360-degree urban perspective through his different scales of intervention.
About Ora Ito:
In 1997, Ora ïto hijacked top brands with his virtual Vuitton and Apple products that instantly became global icons of the digital revolution. A phenomenon in pop culture, he is the youngest designer of his generation to collaborate with jewels of luxury goods and industry, after the huge multi-acclaimed success of his aluminium Heineken bottle. Cassina, Cappellini, Bouygues, Alstom, Laguiole, Zanotta and Accor highly rate his sculptural design that has become a mark of modernity.
The multidisciplinary, transversal Ora ïto studio has since gone from telephone to architecture, from furniture to the hotel industry, from perfume to tramways and from flying saucers to restaurants, manipulating symbols to simplify them. A tenacious methodology for which he has invented a neologism: simplexity, decoding today’s DNA to conceptualise future mutations. His fluid vocabulary materialises movement reinventing streamlining in the digital era and giving shape to the desires of our contemporary society.
In 2013, he created MAMO, an art centre on the roof terrace of the mythical Cité Radieuse designed by Le Corbusier in Marseille. A historical and contemporary place high in the sky, with a 360° view that summarises his passion for levitation and lightness, ‘Defying the laws of gravity creates feelings that go beyond aesthetics.’ The greatest contemporary artists from Xavier Veilhan to Dan Graham are exhibited there before Ito inaugurates an architectural collaboration with Daniel Buren, the master of French conceptual art.
Ora ïto now attracts media and economic benefits that make him a unique player in the international design arena. Wallpaper ranked him amongst the top 40 most influential designers under 40 years old. He was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2011.
Project Name : LVMH Media Division Office
Brand : LVMH Media Division
Designer : Ora Ito
Type : Interior, Office
Location : Paris, France
Staircase production : Kozac
Light conception : Distylight
Photography : We Are Content(s)
Year : 2017
