Project description
The Hostellerie de Plaisance is a hotel restaurant located in the medieval city of Saint-Emilion, in the South-West of France. It contains 14 rooms and 3 modern suites, and features a 2 Michelin-starred restaurant. The project is part of the total refurbishment of the Hostellerie de Plaisance (built in 1860), which was upgraded to current and future regulations (RT 2020). The contractor was commissioned to renovate the ceiling and the upper part of the walls of the restaurant. The main idea of the interior designer was to give the dining room smoother and rounder lines. He intended to break with its rectilinearity and to reconcile a modernised design with improved speech intelligibility and thermal comfort in the room. The contractor’s work consisted in 3 points: 1) create suspended clouds of fibrous plaster; 2) integrate semi-circular cornices as a smooth transition between the walls and the ceiling; 3) integrate an HVAC system into the existing ceiling.
Contractor
Bretou Bdéco
The contractor Bretou Bdeco is a long-lasting member of the Club entreprises Placo®. They are specialized in all kind of traditional plaster work, and they are one of the well renowned specialists of fibrous plaster and decorative plasterwork in France. Based in Bordeaux, they have participated in the renovation of various wine chateaux and country estates in the region. Stéphane Dolo and Stéphane Berneaudeau, who were both originally employees of the company, have taken over its direction a few years ago.
Key Achievements
- Innovative glass reinforced gypsum solution: coping with the huge dimensions of the clouds
- Improved performances: sound intelligibility and thermal comfort (HVAC)
- Excellent aesthetics: the dining room is a work of art, pushing back the limits of plaster
- Proven know-how in both fibrous plaster and drywall: the contractor was able to reconcile technical / performance based solutions and exceptional design
Key Challenges
- An ambitious design of a world-renowned interior designer
- A trade-off between lightweight and stability of the elements, requiring the creation of an innovative fibrous plaster solution
- The huge dimensions of the clouds – a challenge in terms of logistics and transport
- A project combining aesthetics and technical features (acoustics, HVAC)
- Collaboration with different players involved into the project (electrician, heating engineer, painter…)