Beauty clinic

Architectural Review, The, June, 2000 by Brian Carter

Vivid colour, space-dissolving mirrors and spare economy of materials animate this hairdressing and beauty salon in Montreal.

The scheme enthusiastically adopts the austere qualities of an inherited building shell. As in the Cinematheque Qu[acute{e}]b[acute{e}]coise (AR August 1998), light shapes space. White walls predominate, but in one half of the salon they are telescoped in plan. Panels of mirror and glass are suspended within the space. Together with strips of coloured light set between the telescoped walls they create a series of places where both hairdresser and customer become conspicuous actors on a stage set of remarkable complexity and magic that is also forcefully projected into the street.

The design for Orbite, a beauty salon tucked into the ground floor of a new building on Laurier Street in Montreal contrasts the extrovert theatrical world of the hairdresser with a privacy more usual for a health clinic. By juxtaposing an existing imposed symmetry projected in the facade and plan of a new building with these two aspects of the programme, Saucier & Perrotte have imbued a modest interior design project with material and spatial significance.

Alongside the place where hair is trimmed and teased, another is intended for more radical transformations. Screened by a series of translucent glazed screens and organized for privacy, it is in sharp contrast to the boldly upright hairdressers' chairs that put people on show. Light is manipulated to reflect off white surfaces ensuring that the faces and hands to be treated are clearly visible to the beautician, while keeping the identity of the customers discreetly away from public view.

Detailing is minimal, in places to the point that it seems almost invisible. Fittings have the economical elegance of instruments, while the design of the lighting and use of different types of glass and colour create layers of transparency and translucence which impart a fitting sense of mystery and ephemerality.