rodolphe parente and marion mailaender revive the spirit of 1985 paris sports club
facing the eiffel tower, the renewed ken club turns fitness into an all-day social environment, using saturated color, curved forms, and references to its 1985 identity.
rodolphe parente and marion mailaender reimagine ken club
Rodolphe Parente and Marion Mailaender reimagine Paris’ Ken Club as an architecture in motion, bringing the 1985 identity of the fitness and social club into a contemporary setting opposite the Eiffel Tower. The architects approach the past as an architectural remix, shaping a place where the visual language and atmosphere of the 1980s are sampled, reworked, and given a new rhythm. Parente and Mailaender imagine the club almost as a film set built to last, recreating the atmosphere of another era without turning the interiors into a period replica. Saturated colors, rounded forms, reflective surfaces, and theatrical contrasts between light and shadow give the spaces a sense of movement.
The Parisian sports club looks back to its 1985 beginnings
When Mireille and Pierre Benzaquen founded the Ken Club in 1985, it quickly became a social spot where people came to exercise, meet, and spend time together. Forty years later, the renovation takes that history as its starting point. Parente and Mailaender were tasked with recreating the spirit of the original Ken Club without copying its appearance. References to the 1980s are abstracted and redistributed throughout the interior, allowing the building to acknowledge its past.
A light-filled interior is organized around seating areas, pools, circulation routes, and planted zones, while strong graphic interventions interrupt the architectural framework. Pale surfaces meet turquoise, yellow, pink, and green, producing an environment that feels deliberately removed from the visual language often associated with fitness spaces. A patterned ceiling spreads irregular green forms across a warm yellow surface. Seen from below, the composition reads almost like an oversized graphic work, while its scale turns the ceiling into an active part of the spatial experience. Circular openings are cut into walls, framing views between rooms and introducing a recurring motif of curved geometry. The pool area takes this language in another direction. Blue surfaces surround the water, while a large circular opening creates a view into the adjoining space.
This approach reflects what made the Ken Club different when it opened. It was designed as a place where exercise and social life could happen together, and the new interiors continue that idea. Members move between areas for training, swimming, resting, and meeting, with the architecture changing along the way.
The architects describe the project as an ‘architectural remix’ and a ‘sample of a state of mind.’ Rather than trying to recreate the club exactly as it looked in 1985, they have taken its atmosphere as a starting point. The result feels connected to the original Ken Club without turning the interior into a recreation of the past.
project info:
name: Ken Club | @kenclubparis
architects: Rodolphe Parente | @rodolpheparente, Marion Mailaender | @marionmailaender
location: Paris, France
original opening: 1985
