06. Mar 2019

Architectural metal fabric: Golden glow for ParisLongchamp

As part of the redesign of ParisLongchamp – the venue for the world’s best known horse race – French star architect Dominique Perrault opted for metal fabric from GKD – GEBR. KUFFERATH AG. Employed as cladding for façades, walls and ceilings in the new four-story building, the golden fabric underlines his concept of visual openness. It also improves the room acoustics and serves as effective solar protection.

Each year the famous racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne hosts the Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, which is considered to be the world championship of horse racing. The four-story grandstand is the heart of the new ParisLongchamp venue. It will also be used for open-air events in the future, opening the site to a broader and younger audience. Its silhouette is reminiscent of the movement of a galloping racehorse. The shelf-like construction of the grandstand, which is open at both the front and the rear, grants 360-degree views of the stables, parade ring, racecourse, and park landscape and links the 160-meter-long structure with the landscape and the required infrastructure. On the main grandstand and the pavilions along the representative stairway at the main entrance, story-height, horizontally movable solar protection elements made of golden Escale 7 x 1.5 stainless steel fabric create a sense of Mediterranean elegance. The open woven structure prevents the buildings from becoming too warm, thereby supporting the venue’s ambitious energy concept, which complies with the HQE (Haute Qualité Environnemental) standard throughout. Daylight is softly filtered into the interior rooms and the high transparency of the fabric enables unencumbered views of the outside. To improve the room acoustics, characterized by reverberant glass and concrete surfaces, Dominique Perrault also used gold-colored CMP fabric to produce suspended ceilings. Ceiling elements measuring 2.4 meters long and 0.9 meters wide give the ceilings in the corridors a monolithic effect. In the Salon Présidentiel, fabric panels made from golden Escale 7 x 1 spiral mesh suspended vertically from the ceiling provide visual structure and lend the room an elegant atmosphere. This effect is heightened by four-meter-high wall hangings of the same fabric type above the windows.