PARIS – L’Oréal has created an enormous multisensorial space, called Le Visionnaire – Espace François Dalle, where its employees from world wide can delve into the group’s heritage and culture, and innovate, inside the company’s historic headquarters at 14 Rue Royale in Paris.

On Thursday evening, the French beauty giant officially inaugurated the renovated constructing, which artfully mixes 18^th-century and ultra-modern elements.

Speeches there have been given by Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, granddaughter of L’Oréal’s founder, whose family is the group’s largest individual shareholder; Jean-Paul Agon, chairman of L’Oréal; Nicolas Hieronimus, chief executive officer of L’Oréal, and Bruno Le Maire, France’s minister of economy and finance.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, was among the many attendees at Le Visionnaire’s opening, together with L’Oréal personnel and journalists.

The 45,210-square-foot constructing originally by architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel has a façade and roof which can be listed. as historical monuments today.

The placement has served because the longstanding home to L’Oréal’s hairdressing activity, which was the corporate’s first metier.

Architect Alain Moatti steered the constructing’s redesign. On entering, there’s an atrium with a soaring glass-and-metal roof. It is a component of an ovoid structure with a reflective lacquer shell added to the constructing’s inner-courtyard side.

“Le Visionnaire is the concept bridge between the past and the long run of L’Oréal,” Agon said in an announcement. “This place reaffirms our values, our absolute beliefs in innovation and our attachment to transmission.”

The manager said “the L’Oréal adventure will proceed to be written where it began.”

“Entirely designed in a collaborative fashion and equipped with one of the best of tech and digital, it offers each an immersion within the soul of our house, in addition to a deep exploration of the world to permit our employees to invent together the fantastic thing about the long run,” said Hieronimus.

“Employees at L’Oréal are really attached to this constructing for many various reasons,” said Cristina Palme, project lead for Le Visionnaire. “Visually, we’ve an image of Mr. Schueller standing within the office which has been on the third floor since 1938.”

She was referring to Eugène Schueller, L’Oréal’s founder, whose wood-paneled office has been restored to its former glory.

“It’s the constructing of L’Oréal’s heritage,” continued Palme. “We’re really attached to our roots.”

Le Visionnaire is L’Oréal’s only constructing in central Paris. Until 2017, the 14 Rue Royale structure served as home to the group’s Skilled Products Division. Many ideas were then volleyed around as to what to do with the constructing after that. An ah-ha moment got here next.

“We said: ‘Let’s do something that is absolutely dedicated to transmission [of savoir-faire and history] – not a business place,’” said Palme, explaining that the humanistic purpose interested the cultural affairs and historic monuments governing bodies in France.

Le Visionnaire is inspired by the vision of Dalle, who served as L’Oréal’s CEO between 1957 and 1984, and built the corporate into the international powerhouse it’s today.

This hybrid constructing – part workshop, part bivouac – is supposed free of charge exchanges and the birth of disruptive ideas. It’s a primary for L’Oréal and billed because the only of its kind in the sweetness industry.

Le Visionnaire has 21 rooms on five floors made to spotlight L’Oréal’s roots, history, culture, inspiration and experimentation. Palme summed up the constructing’s vocation as “transmission, innovation, creation.”

A marketing approach was taken for the constructing’s conception.

“We imagined scenarios of usage with employees,” said Palme. “We created a kind of ‘persona.’” That’s the perfect person at work within the constructing.

Furniture here is just not premium or ostentatious, but chosen for various reasons. One was to discover each space. Palme said that when adults work surrounded by the identical things on a regular basis, their brains will produce similar ideas.

“It’s your cognitive system that works in this manner,” she explained. ”So we desired to create spaces which can be in a position to distract the lazy working of the brain.”

On each floor and in each room, brains are supposed to be distracted by the varied furniture and layouts.

“In every room we’ve a really unusual piece of furniture,” said Palme. “Because your brain is drawn to this piece of furniture, this distraction helps it work another way. This may foster creativity, brainstorming, etcetera. We kept all these cognitive systems very strongly in mind after we developed all of the spaces.”

In three “consultation rooms,” Le Visionnaire, La Route and Les Marques, L’Oréal collaborated with IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, on sound there, “since the impact of a particular sound in your brain – especially if you find yourself making a mood board, a brainstorm tool – certain sounds have an effect,” said Palme.

So forget lounge music. Le Visionnaire is a pioneering project on all levels. It has a prospective tool, created with artificial intelligence, by Local Project, which is accessible in the middle of the constructing, known as the “egg.” This might help employees create mood boards and have inspirational images for his or her on a regular basis work.

It’s the primary time L’Oréal has opted to create a physical place with assets and content – there are greater than 2,500 digitized documents and 335 iconic products on display – to explain the group’s actions and history. In a single area, there’s a connected cabinet of curiosities.

Le Visionnaire is supplied with a content collection system allowing visitors to decide on information relevant to themselves in an lively, modern, digital way.

“You might have to combine up, once more, the cognitive interactions,” said Palme. “You might have to the touch, listen, read and see. It’s a kind of synesthesia. We use all of the senses, because if you find yourself lively in discovering a message, you might be way more in a position to register this content. And this content stays in your brain longer.”

The name of every room in Le Visionnaire – akin to “l’audace calculé,” or “calculated audacity” – is linked to Dalle’s pioneering heritage. To study this, people can flash the QR code found under every room’s name.

“They’re names connected to an attitude, a way of working at L’Oréal,” said Palme. “We try to attract these great ideas from the past into modernity and the present dynamic you possibly can get from them.”

“’La brèche’ [or “the breach”] is about breaking the foundations,” she continued. “François Dalle was talking about this in 1960. This is concept is so incredibly dynamic and modern.”

On Le Visionnaire’s top floor is the reworked hairdressing academy, with state-of-the-art chairs for hair washing that use the L’Oréal Skilled Water Saver showerhead created with Gjosa.

This is not any traditional coworking space.

“It’s a spot to create, invent, work out and picture the L’Oréal of the long run,” said Palme.