Studio Idaë

Interior design

Envie Le Labo

The Envie Federation called on Studio Idaë to design the layout, graphic identity, signage and educational program for Envie Le Labo, a community-based eco-place in the Ménilmontant district of Paris’s 20th arrondissement. The building includes a store selling and repairing household appliances, practical workshops on the fight against waste, training rooms for the integration and repair professions, and offices for the Federation.

To design the building’s layout, we organized consultation sessions with Federation employees and members of local associations. This enabled us to gain a better understanding of the future uses of the site and how they would coexist (work, workshop, training, events, sales, repairs, etc.).

The challenge of the development project, as with the design of the building by the Urban Act agency, was to give priority to re-use.

The logo is a variation on the historic Envie logo, with two stylized hands joined together. These are placed at the center of a plan view of a neighborhood, a way of placing Envie Le Labo at the heart of the city. The ensemble represents a washing machine, evoking the associative structure’s field of activity.

The site’s graphic identity was designed using felt-tip drawings. It is expressed through pictograms describing the site’s various activities, signage panels, window decorations and an educational trail.

The store was designed to meet the handling requirements of household appliances and the sturdiness of display units. It is organized around existing metal structures to which printed panels have been added.

The floors were fitted out in a frugal manner. Through reuse and recycling, as well as the avoidance of materials (raw finishes), we were able to avoid the use of 20 tonnes of new elements, which corresponds to 45% of the total materials and objects used to fit out the building. For example, a total of 180 pieces of furniture (tables, chairs, office chairs, cupboards, etc.) and renovated household appliances purchased locally (less than 120 km away) were given a second life. We also custom-designed the furniture and made recommendations for the choice of re-used furniture.

An educational trail of some forty signposts informs visitors about the provenance and manufacture of the materials and objects present in the building.

The signage for the spaces was designed using household appliance resistors recovered by Envie Trappes.

Finally, 5 showcases each display a fragment of an item repaired by Envie: an oven, a washing machine, a dishwasher, a refrigerator, hobs.

In 2023, Envie commissioned us to create a recycling frieze in the building’s main stairwell. Composed from reused elements, the frieze plays with the graphic style of the recycled elements and retraces the history of the federation.