While the rest of the world is stuck with tattoo parlors that (to very superficially lump them all together) are enough to make one seriously question the taste of the artists working there, Paris has one that makes a concerted effort to reject the look of the typical ink shop. The TribalAct parlor was redone by France's FREAKS freearchitects, who outlined to Dezeen very candidly all that they sought to reject. Said FREAKS partner Guillaume Aubry, who found his firm the gig after getting a tattoo there himself: "The culture of tattoo and piercing, a mix of street style, underground sub-cultures, and high trend influences, most of the time end up with a busy, messy, cheesy aesthetic where skulls, mermaids, dolphins and I-love-mum-roses share the room equivalently."
The notably playful firm (their website intro incorporates Power Rangers footage) reconfigured the first floor into a bright, open space with a sitting area set against a backdrop of brown palm frond wallpaper. The very minimal upstairs space can be divided by a curtain printed with a Hieronymus Bosch painting (a very far cry from an "I-luve-mum rose"), chosen because of its "mix of excitation, fear, pain," as all that "helps a lot to forget our tortured body. Think of how great it would be to have a picture to look at on the ceiling when sitting at the dentist's!"
· FREAKS freearchitects redesigns Parisian tattoo parlour to avoid "cheesy" aesthetic [Dezeen]
· Come See Three 'Napoleons' and a Dog Observe a Paris Loft [Curbed National]