The history continues! By their passion and commitment, Ernest Cognacq and his wife Marie-Louise Jaÿ created La Samaritaine in the heart of Paris in the late 19th century. Enlightened clients. With Frantz Jourdain and Henri Sauvage, their architects, from 1870 they invented an archetype, the world in a store where you could find everything.
One hundred years later, with the great liner having reached the end of its tether, Bernard Arnault with LVMH took a gamble and brought it back to life with SANAA, an architectural practice based in Japan. A master of its art, SANAA wielded the same weapon as Jourdain and Sauvage: creativity.
Contemporary architecture has restructured La Samaritaine and restored it to the city that it reflects, inseparable, rue de Rivoli, with the great drapery of its glass façade. At the heart of the department store, it takes visitors to the Seine and the Pont-Neuf along an internal street dotted with trees and patios with glass skies.
A loving journey through the layers of an Art Nouveau and Art Deco architectural heritage, revealed by meticulous restoration and rising to a climax in the great glass roof and splendid mounted canvases.
Jean-François Pousse
This project is the renovation of La Samaritaine, a late 19th century “Grand magasin” in Paris.The site is of great historical significance and the footprint of the building extends from Rue de Rivoli to the Quai du Louvre, overlooking the Seine.
Our design creates a “passage de La Samaritaine”, a new street with social and commercial activities that runs through the length of the existing building. It connects three full height courtyards, one existing and two new: each is unique in design and together they create an alternating sequence of indoor activity areas and spaces that are open to views of the sky. This new Paris passage is both a physical and figurative connection between the historical façade of the Sauvage building overlooking the Seine and the new façade we have designed for Rue de Rivoli.
Our design for the Rivoli façade revitalizes the image of La Samaritaine. The soft waves of the glass echo the rhythm and scale of neighboring fenestration, establishing continuity along this busy commercial street. To further enhance the integration of the new design within its urbancontext the glass reflects and transforms the surrounding environment, creating a subtle combination of the historical and the contemporary across its surface. Our intention is to establish a harmonious relationship between those parts that are renovated and those that are new.
SANAA
Conception
SANAA
Kazuyo Sejima Ryue Nishizawa
Yoshitaka Tanase
Loic Engelhard, Takayuki Hasegawa, Takayuki Furuya, Léa Hippolyte, Marc Dujon, Bradley Fraser, Shogo Onodera, Arrate Arizaga Villalba, Corinne Bokufa, Eloka Som Lucy Styles, Yukiko Kamei, Margot Aurensan
Operation
SrA Architectes, Jean Rouit, Clémence Saubot
Heritage restoration
Lagneau Architectes, Jean-François Lagneau, Xavier Lagneau, Patrice Girard, Jean-Jacques Brunie
Housing and nursery
FBAA | François Brugel Architectes Associés
François Brugel, Victor de Almeida
