Maison Louis Vuitton - Champs Elysées

The biggest Louis Vuitton store in the world is logically set at the most prestigious Parisian address: the Champs Élysées Avenue.
The new Maison Vuitton wants to inscribe itself as the prolonging of the exclusive promenade that the Champs-Élysées represents in Paris, and in the world. An interior filter façade, made out of silver and gold Vuitton monograms is set behind all store windows of the store; it’s visibility is scaled on the city of light (Paris, la ville lumière) !

Inside the building, this filter façade is the link and the path that guides us through the different product zones; inserts, made out of different materials (glass, leather, ceramic), intend to individualize these zones and to set their specificities. The main circulation-path of the store has been conceived as a pleasant and smooth down-going promenade. The several event-spaces and contemporary areas of luxury are placed along that new and very parisian walk.

At the beginning of the journey, a monumental escalator guides the visitor directly to the top level of the store. A 20 meter-long fibre-optics wall, animated by several video-art installations, shortens the time of that virtual voyage. A succession of comfortable product-terraces brings the visitor gradually back to the entrance level.

The key-stone of the organizational scheme of the store (and its most prestigious area, the luggage zone…) is a 20-meter high, dramatically oversized atrium. A vibrant (as well as liquid) image is provided by the combination of the skylight and the arrangement of a semi-dome made out of 1.900 stainless steel tubes.

Reflections, light and moiré effects tend to create this new cathedral of contemporary luxury, monumental and ephemeral at the same time.