XYZ Lounge


XYZ Lounge (2017 - 2018) by Didier Faustino

About the artwork

"The XYZ Lounge is a place where roads cross and of transversality. As the central point of meeting and exchanging for users of the Zebrastraat conference center, it questions the current notions of conviviality and corporality. At a time when social, sexual and gender identities are jostled and questioned, how can we offer a place that is both neutral and sensual, a place that is neither a social marker nor an single-identity space?" This is how Didier Faustino summarizes the new concept.

"The architectural intervention, covering a total surface of 360m², consisted of a redefinition of the uses and volumetrics of the public spaces: entrance, bar and central aisle, lateral spaces, and corridors in the mezzanine leading to the conference / meeting rooms.
A prefabricated metal frame made to measure imposes a new boundary to spaces and supports the walls and ceilings: molded stucco lining, marble panels, textile ceilings, illuminating surfaces and wooden sidings.

The lounge unfolds from the entrance on three spaces: a free space on the left for cocktails and evenings with DJ including a projection screen, the bar in the central space, and a smaller free space on the right giving access on the terrace.

The specially designed furniture consists of fixed elements made of marble (counter, islands and light suspensions), tables and high stools (lacquered steel tubes, marble trays and leather seats) and a series of rotomoulded chairs in polypropylene.

The XYZ Lounge has been thought of as a space for a new form of physicality and identity, a space of convergence and interaction with suspended temporality. It is a contained emptiness, conducive to bodily trajectories and eroticism, with at its center the bar, element of connection and disconnection, stitching point where moving human beings meet and separate.

The marble, the stucco and the material, all clean materials, stage the meetings of this space in-between and form an envelope whose tones appeal to the sensuality of the flesh.

The XYZ Lounge, in an assumed duality, returns to a romantic science-fiction and makes us switch to a "somewhere else", both familiar and unknown."

Didier Faustino

About the artist

image Didier Fiúza Faustino, Lives and works in Paris and Lisbon - www.didierfaustino.com

Didier Fiúza Faustino is an architect and artist working on the relationship between body and space.

He started his own practice at the crossroad of art and architecture just after graduating in architecture in 1995. He has been developing since then a multi-faceted approach, ranging from installation to experimentation, from visual art to the creation of multi-sensorial spaces, mobile architecture and buildings.

After teaching six years at the AA School in London (Diploma Unit 2) and being two years editor in chief of the French architecture and design magazine CREE in 2015 and 2016, Didier Faustino is currently fully dedicating his time on architecture projects (Mexico, Costa Rica, Belgium, Portugal and France) and art installation and exhibitions (Vienna, Geneva, Lisbon, Los Angeles).