La Fabrique de Lunettes
Marc Ifrah Architecture

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The store occupies the ground floor of an Haussmaniann building. Though the store is a large open space, its layout comprises several rooms as in an apartment: a waiting room, a living room, a kids room and the laboratory. The laboratory stands behind a glass wall, so customers can see the opticians at work on their state of the art equipment. Customers therefore really feel at ease in this homey ambiance. To reinforce this layout, the architect painted the arch in black and used washed out yellow and blue colours on the walls.

The glasses presentation cabinets have been entirely custom made and are freely inspired by Piet Mondrian’s painting. While the glasses are presented on the upper part of the cabinets with a white illuminated background, the lower closed parts of the cabinets are red, blue and yellow parallelepipeds. This lower part of the cabinets is used to store the glasses a hand away from the samples presented, as well as other materials.

The shape and size of the cabinets are adapted to the particular needs. An oriented mirror has been placed on top of each cabinet, enabling the customers to see themselves while trying on the glasses. Under each mirror and due to their inclination, the architect used the remaining horizontal space to print the details and brands of the glasses in order to make them readable through the mirror. On top of being useful information, this optical impression is animating as well.

Last but not least, the architect rounds up the presentation of this project by the large entrance door, which is made out of plain oak and mounted on two pivots. It is recessed inside the shop so that it can open without disturbing the flow of pedestrians in the street.