Since launching their eponymous Paris-based practice in 1992, Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane have produced a series of exuberant projects that wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi film. For their first notable commission, Restaurant Georges, they inserted four large, aluminum-clad blobs into a stripped-down space in the Pompidou Center [RECORD, September 2000, page 128]. Years later, for their design of the Docks de Paris, they wrapped tubes of bright-green-fritted glass around a warehouse-turned-fashion center on the River Seine [RECORD, June 2009, page 110]. Employing digital design tools to cleverly manipulate materials and form has become a signature for the 19-employee firm.
With the Orange Cube, Jakob + MacFarlane has shown once again that it likes to push the envelope. Completed last fall, the 67,640-square-foot building, which contains a ground-floor furniture showroom and offices above, is perched on a river’s edge in a converted industrial zone in Lyon, France. Surrounded mostly by gray, modern structures, the six-story box, with its conical gashes and pulsating orange veil, is the life of the party.
On any given day, you’ll find locals and tourists alike gathering outside the building, studying its unusual features and snapping photos.
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