"We can't ignore the reference to an animal; it could be a beetle or a dragon," Aude Planterose of Agence Jouin Manku told Dezeen of his firm's recent addition to the suburban Paris headquarters of Société Foncière Lyonnaise, one of France's oldest commercial property companies. Yeah, we're gonna go with dragon. The two caps of iridescent stainless steel sit atop the office's new wing, which makes for quite a whimsical aside attached to a modernist factory building dating back to 1927. But as wild as it looks at first glance, the new addition serves as a nice foil for the original without undermining what the firm describes as "rigour" and "professionalism," especially with the handsome timber slats giving those shimmering scaled roofs a healthy bit of grounding.
Along with the new wing, which houses a cafe, boardrooms, and a 200-seat auditorium, Agence Jouin Manku renovated the lobby of the main building, adding a pavilion supported by a lattice of branching wooden beams that merge in the center, forming a kind of stem. It's a far cry from Adolphe Bocage's original design, but nearly a century later, that's far from a bad thing. Have a closer look below:
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