Maison Bardot / Antiparos
Status: Completed 2024
Client: Bardot
Type: Gallery Space
Maison Bardot extends Bardot’s modern Cycladic design language across the street into a new interdisciplinary gallery space. The renovation of this nondescript 90s storefront borrows Bardot’s most recognizable exterior features, turning them outside-in to create an unorthodox cultural venue.
Conceived as a ‘white box’ gallery gone native, the straight walls gradually curve to distort the orthogonal geometries of a typical exhibition room. The ridged stucco walls trace a series of horizontal perspective lines that accentuate this warping effect. Terra cotta tiles infuse a dash of ochre into the space, extruding from the two-dimensional surface of the floor into three-dimensional podiums and walls for the display of objects and artworks.
A free-standing partition that touches neither the walls nor the ceiling acts as a loose division between front- and back-of-house, luring visitors into a concealed rear gallery with a framed view onto a wild garden. An oversized lightbox washes the space in an even, diffuse glow.
The result is a flexible space sympathetic to multiple cultural uses, including the inaugural collaboration with Antiqua – an Athens-based antiquarian renowned for its world-class collection of mid-century furniture and objects. While versatile, Maison Bardot’s idiosyncrasy nevertheless resists the placelessness of conventional galleries and challenges curators to consider local architecture. In the case of Antiqua, the selected range of international objects engages in an unusual dialogue with the minimal Cycladic space, each re-contextualizing the other in new ways.
Together, Bardot and Maison Bardot embrace the responsible change of Antiparos and the Greek Islands more broadly. Rather than colonizing the main strip with parasitic tourist traps that exploit the island’s success, the two spaces merge into a seamless ensemble that showcases local craftsmanship and invigorates the public realm. Restored façades inspired by different traditional techniques and lively outdoor seating activate the streetscape, creating a new civic and cultural intersection – one where design, leisure, hospitality, and street life converge into a vibrant gathering space for locals and visitors alike.
