
From now on, find our works exclusively on BETILLON / DORVAL-BORY
Depuis le XVIIe siècle, moment de l’apparition du café littéraire, l’histoire culturelle de Paris est inscrite dans les alcôves et comptoirs de ses estaminets. Lieux de vie et de dynamisme intellectuel, les cafés parisiens vibraient des ambiances bruyantes ou feutrées, atmosphères stimulantes et souvent enfumées générées par leurs usagers et peut-être aussi par une part impalpable, davantage inhérente au lieu.
1. Chambre à dynamique de flux
2. Bar à échange thermique
3. Restaurant à filtration d’air
4. Boudoir anéchoïque
5. Fumoir hormonal
My friend Pascal Grasso recently achieved several works (an apartment, an office and a showroom). Following a general graphical idea, he developed an interesting layout for each space using extruded volumes. Like for his previous project Nomiya, Pascal asked me to take the pictures of these three projects.


Office and showroom :











In each issu, new architecture magazine PLOT from Buenos Aires publishes an article about young architecture offices in one specific city… the first one was about London. For the second issu, chief editor Florencia Rodriguez asked me to select a few interesting practices here in Paris. Among a list of ten names, they finally picked four : Philippe Rahm, La Ville Rayée / Face B, Adélaïde & Nicola Marchi, and us (Bétillon / Dorval-Bory). I was also in charge of taking portrait of them, so here they are.
Philippe Rahm, in his office
La Ville Rayée (David Apheceix, Sébastien Barat Martinez, Benjamin Lafore) on the stairs of the Eglise St Vincent de Paul.
Me and Raphaël Bétillon, near Belleville.
Nicola & Adélaïde Marchi, down the stairs of their office.
An interesting article has been published in this week (13/10) french magazine Les Inrockuptibles by architect Philippe Rahm, where he explains his interpretation of the work of Claude Monet and in which I am briefly named along with other artists and architects.We thought we were the grandchildren of Duchamp, and we discover that in reality we are descendants of Claude Monet. We were taught to distrust science, and here we rediscover an artist engaged with the scientific avant-garde of his time, working on the principle of colors optical mix of Charles Blanc, or the law of simultaneous contrast theorized by Michel-Eugène Chevreul. In a current analysis of the vaporized and meteorological work of Claude Monet, a possibility exists to draw another genealogy of French contemporary art, which would go back up, through spectral music and Nouveau Roman, in a straight line to the Impressionists ( cf. Révolutions Sonores by Guy Lelong, MF Editions, 2010). What matters most is not the subject but the shapes that may arise from analytical dissociation of the methods we work with. We explore the infinitely small, we analyze the optical or sound spectra, we decompose reality into visual, electromagnetic or thermal particles, then we recompose it, but with a number of its elements, not all of them. In all these works, there is a sort of French light, this rational brightness of the Enlightenment, the whiteness of writing, this almost chemical objectivity, a lack of narrative, but from which emerges something magical, a "disturbing unreality", related to "a further realism more than a deliberate fiction" as Gerard Genette said about Robbe-Grillet. Today, a number of our work are coming within the scope of this descent : those of architects Berger&Berger or Nicolas Dorval-Bory, designer Mathieu Lehanneur, artists Loris Gréaud and Laurent Grasso. I am an impressionist too.--
Philippe Rahm
Nous pensions être les petits-enfants de Duchamp, et nous découvrons qu'en réalité nous descendons de Claude Monet. On nous a appris à nous méfier de la science, et voici qu'on redécouvre un artiste en prise avec l'avant-garde scientifique de son époque, travaillant sur le principe du mélange optique des couleurs de Charles Blanc ou sur la loi du contraste simultané théorisée par Michel-Eugène Chevreul. Il y a dans la relecture actuelle de l'œuvre vaporisée et météorologique de Claude Monet la possibilité de tracer une autre généalogie de l'art contemporain français, qui remonterait, par la musique spectrale et le Nouveau Roman, en droite ligne jusqu'aux impressionnistes (cf. Révolutions sonores... de Guy Lelong, MF Editions, 2010). Ce qui compte n'est pas le sujet mais les formes qui peuvent surgir de la dissociation analytique des moyens avec lesquels on travaille. On explore l'infiniment petit, on analyse les spectres optiques ou sonores, on décompose le réel en particules visuelles, électromagnétiques ou thermiques, puis on le recompose, mais avec un certain nombre de ses éléments, pas tous. Dans l'ensemble de ces travaux, il y a une sorte de lumière française, cette clarté rationnelle des Lumières, la blancheur de l'écriture, cette objectivité presque chimique, l'absence de narration, mais dont se dégage quelque chose de magique, une "troublante irréalité", qui relèverait "non pas d'une fiction délibérée, mais d'un réalisme plus poussé", comme le disait Gérard Genette à propos de Robbe-Grillet. Aujourd'hui, un certain nombre de nos travaux s'inscrivent dans cette descendance, ceux des architectes Berger&Berger ou Nicolas Dorval-Bory, du designer Mathieu Lehanneur, des artistes Loris Gréaud ou Laurent Grasso. Je suis moi aussi un impressionniste.
Philippe Rahm
Raphaël and I recently produced a draft for a small extension of a classical house in Toulouse. Using an existing garage, the client wanted to convert it into a small hotel room, adding a second floor to it. Following the building regulation of the neighborhood, we had to create a shifted and cantilevered volume supported by a concrete wall, generating an interesting relation with the existing structure.


Thanks to a proposal by my friend Yannick Mas, I'm taking part in an interesting introductory project to architecture in a small middle school of a lower-class neighborhood, the cité de Grand Vaux. The project seeks to teach the architectural conception of a sustainable small public library to grade 7 pupils. More information after the first session, next wednesday!
Back in Buenos Aires a few months ago, I produced for new architecture magazine PLOT a photographical documentary about the “conjunto Los Andes”, a social housing complex built by architect Fermin Bereterbide in 1927. It's in the very same building that we (Max Zolkwer office) made the renovation of an apartment I had wrote about here.

