M/M, A Retrospective

Café Etienne Marcel

“Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno and the two of us were commissioned together by Thierry Costes as a group of non-architects to design a Parisian Café. We came up with a solution that could be described by the title of a novel by French writer Patrick Modiano, “Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue” (In the Cafe of Lost Youth). With absolutely no fascination for melancholia, we designed a place that would age within its area. We were all fascinated by the Parisian cafés that were built in the fifties by anonymous designers in which we spent time as teenagers rebuilding the world with beers, cigarettes, jukeboxes and words. Those places have become landmarks within the parisian landscape. They today tend to disappear. The Café Étienne Marcel pays a tribute to those places. Another remarkable thing on this project is that it features our first three-dimensional work, as architects of signs.”

CREDIT: M/M (Paris) Café Eitenne Marcel, 2002. Art direction by M/M (Paris) with Pierre Huyghe & Philippe Parreno for Thierry Costes. Courtesy mmparis.com