Elliot Barnes Celebrates 15 Years in Paris
When Cornell University–educated architect Elliot Barnes decided to come to Paris, he set his sights high, vowing he would work for the iconic French designer Andrée Putman. He had met her once in Los Angeles, where he began his professional career working for Canadian architect Arthur Erickson. "This is really where I got the feeling of a residence as a laboratory for ideas and for developing a certain vocabulary of architectural forms and finishes," he tells AD PRO about his time in L.A. In 1987, Barnes made the trip to Paris—and ended up working with Putman for the next 17 years. “I wanted to move to Paris and I wanted to specifically work for her," he recalls. "I would have come to Paris anyway, but I wouldn’t have stayed if I wasn’t going to work with her. This has happened to all of us, when something just clicks and you know. I ended up running her office, and I was the managing partner for the last seven years I was there. It was a great run."
Following that run, Barnes founded his own eponymous firm in 2004. The practice will be marking its 15-year anniversary next month. With a staff of approximately ten, Barnes says, “I really do interior design, but I think like an architect. The majority of my work is residential, but it’s cyclical. What’s interesting is that as an American architect and interior designer, all of my work is outside the USA. We are currently doing work in Bangkok, and I just received my third commission for Mitsui in Tokyo.”
Barnes has collaborated with a number of French companies, but no American ones. He has created collections for both French furniture design firm Philippe Hurel and Ecart International—the company founded by Andrée Putman in 1978. Launching this month is a collection of five rugs by Barnes for Cogolin, a historic manufactory founded in 1924 in the South of France. Also in January, he'll debut a collection of five designs for lighting manufacture Delisle Paris, another French historic house founded more than 120 years ago. "These are very old, very traditional French names," says the architect. "It is an incredible honor for me to be working for these historic French houses.”
Perhaps the crowning glory of his current projects is the completion of a ten-year renovation he has been working on with the champagne producer Ruinart, the world's oldest established champagne house, founded in Reims, France, in 1729. It all started with an invitational competition where Barnes presented his project, “basing all the materials on the site and the brand," he explains. "This meant sourcing all of the materials necessary there . . . the wood, cork, glass from the bottles. I even made paper for wall coverings using grape skins, which I call wine paper." Barnes literally worked with the DNA of the Ruinart brand. "This was the conceptional guideline for the entire project," he says.
Barnes was awarded the commission with the instruction to modify the existing production site to include private client reception areas for the brand. This meant rethinking the existing tasting rooms and creating an atmosphere befitting of Ruinart. “I wanted to create a bridge to today referencing the past," he muses. "This includes areas for wine tasting, the tours, a boutique . . . reception rooms, and so on. This was a ten-year project, as it was a functioning production site throughout with all the activities, aging, bottling, transport, et cetera, all going on during the work. It was a very complex site." The various areas opened in phases, with the "last piece in the puzzle," the Salon Ruinart, debuting in summer 2018.
Barnes's design sensibility is minimal and modern, with special attention always given to light and innovative use of materials. "I enjoy experimenting with materials," he says. "Using embossed leather, or pleating it to give it an origami feel. I created a Murano glass screen for the Ritz Carlton project in Germany, a transparent chimney and pharmaceutical tubes to create a bar.”
In addition to his commercial projects, Barnes is always juggling a few residential ones as well: a chalet in Switzerland for a major art collector; an apartment in Bangkok. Thinking ahead to the new year, what would he like to do? Barnes pauses to give this some thought and then answers, “I would love to do a boat. A luxury yacht would be an interesting area to work in. I love a context to get really detailed and create a synthesis between the technical requirements and the design. This interests me. I enjoy these kinds of things, what Jean Nouvel calls 'situations.'" And the French inspiration strikes again.
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