CAFE LOUVRE MAINTENANT

Louvre Museum Café Mollien Photography is by Michel Giesbrecht.

Editor’s Note: Earlier in June this blog visited the new restaurant’s in the brand new Switch House addition to the Tate Modern in London.  We continue with a trip across the English Channel (why isn’t it the French Channel?) to Paris, where the café at the Louvre beckoned.

It’s Bastille Day in France so that means the rest of the world sings along in celebration.  What better way to celebrate Le monde Francaise than to visit a restaurant.  But not just any restaurant.  Today, we go to Café Mollien inside the venerable Louvre Museum for lunch and a bit of breaking design news.

           

In time for summer, Paris designer Mathieu Lehanneur, has completed a Lourvre commission to add new lighting to Café Mollien.  He’s added a trio of modern translucent acrylic lampshades, which are casting a pink glow to the café’s stone walls.

Media reports have Lehanneur describing his installation as “three large pale-pink eggs” floating in the air.

Paris designer Mathieu Lehanneur

Cafe Mollien is in the Denon Wing of the museum, and joins it with a

Popular shopping centre and Tuileries Gardens with the Louvre and its expansive art collections.

Beneath Charles-Louis Müller's painted ceiling, 'Glory distributing Palms and Crowns,' the café’s 66-seat dining room and terrace offer a wonderful view of the Louvre's famed Pei-designed Pyramid; Cour Napoleon and Carrousel garden.

Lehanneur chose brilliant white white chairs to contrast with the new pink aura and added a brass strip on the tables to meld the furnishings with the added lampshades. The white chairs also complement the marble color of the café’s entry bar.

Multi-faceted Lehanneur, who has previously designed tech products and interiors for a bar in Paris and for a hotel in London, has recently been named chief of Huawei’s new Chinese-owned research centre in Paris.

**This blog puns the beloved lyrics to the National Anthem of France with extreme affection on this Bastille Day, 2016.  Vive La France!