an effervescent architect for Ruinart

In the heart of Reims, on the Butte Saint-Nicaise, between the U-shaped wings of its historic building still housing printing workshops today, the Ruinart champagne house is inaugurating a new immaculate, bright and airy reception pavilion of 1,400 square meters.

» Discover the entirety of F, Art of Living

Its glass facade is screen-printed with an effervescence of bubbles, a sparkling pattern which, in addition to its decorative fantasy, allows the sun’s rays to be filtered. Its curved roof is inspired by the curves of the famous spirits bottle. “The choice of slightly asymmetrical shapes undoubtedly stems from my Japanese architectural culture, says Sou Fujimoto, to whom we owe this construction. In Japan, traditional houses are never developed with regularity in mind. Rather, surprise effects prevail, visual disconnects which give buildings their dynamic.” A sort of minimal cube erected in Noyant stone, a cream limestone rock, encrusted with shells, from a quarry in the region, the Nicolas Ruinart pavilion – named in the name of the founder of the oldest champagne house – pays homage to the chalk pits from Reims. Its modernity contrasts with the existing 19th century buildings.^e century in the spirit of cavalry stables.

“The idea of ​​bringing contemporary architecture and historical construction into dialogue seems to me to be a typically French specificity, explains Sou Fujimoto. This is something we do less easily in Japan. But to be frank, working in Japan, France or elsewhere is not really a subject; each project depends on the needs of clients, a historical context, the climate and local lifestyles, which requires adapted responses, and therefore different each time.”

Born in Hokkaido in 1971 and graduated in 1994 from the Faculty of Engineering in Tokyo, Sou Fujimoto founded his Japanese agency in 2000, which he added in 2015 with a Parisian branch allowing him to respond to the growing enthusiasm for his work. He is in fact the author of L’Arbre blanc, a housing complex inspired by a tree and bristling with vast cantilevered terraces, foliage-style, inaugurated in Montpellier in 2019. This architectural madness of seventeen floors, facing the Lez river, invites you to a new way of living, both inside and outside. Sou Fujimoto also delivered the shared education building of the École Polytechnique de Saclay in 2023.

A landscaped teaching center, like an inhabited tree, deploying multiple walkways, flexible rooms and atriums which allow interactions and new approaches to learning. “Traditionally, in universities, professors are perched on platforms facing students placed in lecture halls. This no longer responds to current modes of communication where human relationships are more fluid, less hierarchical and more unstructured. We no longer train in the same way, we retain information gleaned here and there, coming from a multitude of interlocutors, and this in life itself, not only on the Internet. It was therefore necessary to design a building that favored other types of interference through more deconstructed spaces.”

Also read When Ruinart converses with nature

Chloe The Rest

Sou Fujimoto is renowned for its aerial, immaculate, luminous buildings, playing on solids and voids. Projects where we find, like a common thread, his obsession with nature. “I grew up on the island of Hokkaido before moving to Tokyo at the age of 14. By their scale, their density and their anarchic character, the streets of the capital lined with wooden houses reminded me of a small forest. I often make a connection between city and forest!” In Paris, what should have been its flagship project, an inhabited forest spanning the Porte Maillot ring road, made up of 127 housing units, 27,589 square meters of offices, a hotel, a bus station, and planted with 1,000 trees, will never come out. of earth. Launched in 2016 as part of “Reinventing Paris”, the program was stopped by the administrative court. Too polluting, because it is located above the ring road.

If, in his early days, the builder worked primarily on small spaces in Japan, he stood out by winning the Architectural Review Awards three years in a row, awarded to emerging personalities in the world of architecture.

In 2013, he designed the Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London, in the heart of Kensington Park. This ephemeral installation, open to the landscape, composed of a geometric steel frame, all in transparency and lightness, reveals it to the world. Many international projects followed. The Hungarian House of Music, in Budapest, nestled among the trees of a park, with an undulating floating roof pierced with excavations, invites children and adults to melodic experiences. Its facade covered with a glass curtain makes the building translucent, blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces – a constant in his work.

We will have to wait until 2025 to discover the very spectacular structure of 60,000 square meters, with a circumference of 2 kilometers, encircling the site of the next universal exhibition in Osaka Bay. A free interpretation of traditional Japanese constructions, this wooden ring which will accommodate galleries and a roof promenade will constitute the main circulation route of the site.

“I always seek to create living spaces that allow a multitude of actions, functions and uses. Their architectural form is often quite simple at first glance, but it tends to become more complex in their organization, with overlapping spaces responding to different uses.”Thus, the entrance hall of the Nicolas Ruinart pavilion plays on a contrast between a dark and narrow area – like the corridors connecting the chalk quarries – and a space bathed in light, a vast plateau opening onto the panorama of a park landscaped, a champagne bar, a boutique and a terrace. An architecture full of surprises.

4, rue des Crayères de la Maison Ruinart, in Reims, open 7 days a week from October 5. Free entry to the sculpture garden and the Nicolas Ruinart pavilion, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Visits to the chalk pits by reservation. Ruinart.com