PARIS — When Noé Duchaufour-Law–rance set out to become a sculptor per his art school training, he couldn’t have guessed that he would instead become one of France’s most sought-after interior designers.
“Sketch [the restaurant] triggered everything,” recalls Duchaufour-Lawrance, 31, referring to Mourad Mazouz’s audacious 27,000-square-foot London space he completed three years ago. Since then, Duchaufour-Lawrance has worked on several attention-grabbing projects, including the 9,000-square-foot Milan Tad concept store that bowed last month. The four-story building features a furniture store, restaurants and a boutique selling the likes of Azzaro, Issey Miyake and Sophia Kokosalaki, as well as a hair salon and a beauty bar. The designer selected neutral tones, mostly gray and pink. The projection of a tree on the elevator acts as a link between the various spaces, giving an organic note to the modern space.
Paris is also still buzzing about his dramatic makeover of the former Lucas Carton, which famous Paris chef Alain Senderens had Duchaufour-Lawrance transform from a gastronomic, Art Deco temple into a deluxe brasserie with a “Star Trek” vibe.
“I adapted to the existing envelope and I worked on the second skin,” the interior designer explains, sipping on black coffee at his Paris office. “It’s micro architecture inside an architecture.”
For the Senderens restaurant, Duchaufour-Lawrance collaborated with Baccarat, engraving its original 18th-century drawings of chandeliers on to dacryl, a synthetic material that possesses the same light refraction properties as crystal.
As an encore, he plans to work with Baccarat on a crystal and silver jewelry line for men scheduled to launch at the end of 2006. The designer said his inspiration comes from organic elements, like air and water, and confessed he’s very much influenced by the 11 years he lived in Brittany, where “the architecture is awful, but the light and nature are sublime.”
The designer often mixes Art Deco and futuristic lines and materials for a look that is ultracontemporary. And while he has the demeanor of a serious student, he likes to play. “I like working on utopian projects. I’m very interested in going beyond what’s possible, beyond organic matters,” he says in his rapid-fire manner.
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Soon, he’ll start working on a new restaurant atop the Printemps flagship department store on Boulevard Haussman scheduled to open later this year.
“The space is very interesting,” he says. “And as long as I’m asked to go as far as possible, it’s great.”