Back6.20041E
Hydracafé
Project for a new cafeteria of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris
Décosterd & Rahm with Jean-Luc Vilmouth, artist
Client : Commande du CNAP,(c) CNAP, Décosterd & Rahm, Jean-Luc Vilmouth / Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris
Our project is an immediate architectural formulation of the initial function of the cafeteria: rehydration. It is on this infra functional level that we would like to work, in the matter of the space and its relation to the body. It is a question of giving form to the program either only according to dimensions of the visible, external or metric representations, but in the body of the space and the human body: to spatialize the function, to form a unit with the need of rehydratation, to live this moisture, at 75%. The body is made up for a major part of water. Each day, there is a water loss estimated at approximately 2,5 liters. Each day, this loss must be balanced. There is an initial internal contribution inside the body, by drinking. There is then a cutaneous contribution, by the steam present in the air and which settles on the skin. Modern environments are usually dry because the temperature is dependent of the moisture of the air. Thus, the heating of space is done at the detriment of relative humidity of the air which decreases more the temperature increases. Hydracafé wants to be the place of a contribution of water at the same time internal and external. It is a question of making cafeteria a space of the rehydration, to drink but also to sit down in moisture, to be a median medium between the interior and the outside, the moisture of the body and that of the space. A heated or refreshed space but humidified. The project uses water according to its physical and physiological properties. A prismatic thickness of water is used in the roof for its thermal properties, its capacity to absorb the infra-reds of sunlight, thus allowing to avoid the heating of surfaces glazed in summer. On the ground, an atomizing by ultrasound varies the relative humidity of the air according to the seasons, passing from 85% in summer to 65% in the winter. Moisture as gas brings its aqueous share to the hydrolipidic film of the skin. The ground, like a wave, plunge more or less deeply in moisture, generating drier or wetter zones we can choose freely.