Restaurant Georges, Centre Pompidou
Paris, France
GEORGES RESTAURANT
Commissioned for the Centre Pompidou, this was one of the first projects to bring Jakob + MacFarlane to public attention. This sixth-floor restaurant and outdoor terrace situated at the top of the museum is operated by the Costes brothers, well known in Paris for their quality brasserie fare. There is 9,690 sq. ft. (900 m²) of interior area and 4,850 sq. ft. (450 m²) of exterior terrace space, all just a few steps from the temporary exhibition galleries of the museum.
The architects explain how they endeavored to create a "kind of non-existent or background presence" in the face of the powerful Piano & Rogers design of the cultural center, which opened to the public in 1977.
They imagined the new volumes of the restaurant as a kind of skin or floor in which they inserted a series of aluminum volumes, intended to house the kitchen, bar, coat check, and private reception area. An example of freely curved, computer-generated design, the built elements of the Georges are in fact clearly based on the grid of the Pompidou building itself. In some sense, the Georges can be imagined as a kind of rubber sheet incorporating the building grid-the new volumes are like a weight or form placed on the sheet, thus deforming it, just as the presence of a planet or star disturbs a gravitational field. These emergences define three sequences: a functional porous interior into which one enters; a second between two mysterious spaces of varied width in which one wanders, with openings toward the exterior, the terrace, and the panorama; and, finally, the free periphery which directs the gaze toward the city.
The project was the result of a 1998 competition entry and encompassed a complete design mission, including furniture and lighting. Tables and chairs are all aligned at an exact height of 27½ in. (70 cm) above the floor in order "to create a sea of furniture, making outside terrace join seamlessly with inside space."
Completed in 2000
Photos: Nicolas Borel, Stéphane Couturier