Sliding door systems in the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris

Automatic sliding door systems from GEZE enhance the former workplace of the great fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. With a discreet, elegant design, invisible technology and access convenience, they underscore the ambience of this Second Empire-style city palace. The headquarters of the fashion brand was recently converted into a museum. The special structural challenges of the tall, wide entrances to the museum complex were overcome with door technology from GEZE.

The door to haute couture – customised sliding doors

The door to haute couture – customised sliding doors

The door to haute couture – customised sliding doors © Christophe Mirabel / GEZE GmbH

The museum is a crowd puller. The automatic glass sliding door systems with powerful Powerdrive drives for the tall, wide entrances to the showrooms proved to be exactly the right choice. Stepping into the foyer through the first sliding door, the visitor comes face to face with the four pop art portraits in which Yves Saint Laurent was immortalized by Andy Warhol, as if being greeted by the “master of the house”. With tinted glass leaves and a drive system hidden from view, the nearby doors blend into the background against the colour intensity of these images. Customised wide-opening automatic sliding doors with heavy glass leaves can be found throughout the museum complex. They guide the visitor to the permanent collection, which includes the legendary tuxedo “Le Smoking”, the leather trench coat and other iconic items, to the areas with temporary exhibition themes and on to the studio.

Fashion museum with a personal touch

Architecture, design and door technology had to come together in harmony, because never before has such a large exhibition been conceived for a fashion designer. In a 450-square-metre museum complex, visitors can immerse themselves in the world of haute couture: a retrospective of the life and work of Yves Saint Laurent and changing themed exhibitions from a collection of 5,000 haute couture models. At the heart of the museum is “Le Studio”, where Saint Laurent spent three decades designing all his collections.

Intensive interaction for the right automatic doors

Preserving the personal atmosphere of the rooms in a modern museum setting was only possible with the help of Pierre Bergé, mastermind of the project and business and life partner of Saint Laurent. The effort that Bergé put into telling the story of the brand and the work of his friend shows just how intense the interaction between the project participants was. These include project manager Réda Issolah from the Paris firm JMR Architectes, interior designer Jacques Grange, set designer Nathalie Crinière and curator Aurélie Samuel. We at GEZE contributed to this collaboration from the very beginning, in particular in working with the architects.

It was important to us to provide all those involved with inspiring suggestions for door solutions, taking into account all the architectural and aesthetic factors and all aspects of the new use of the building. We knew how close many of the exhibits would be to the tall, wide entrances, and that the doors would therefore have to be extremely discreet.

Philippe Eugène, Managing Director of the subsidiary GEZE France

Door aesthetics, access convenience and easy handling

A joint decision was made to use automatic sliding doors with grey-tinted glass leaves and door drives embedded in the ceiling.

Door aesthetics, access convenience and easy handling © Christophe Mirabel / GEZE GmbH

Drawing on our expertise in the most diverse types of buildings with the most diverse uses and based on the flexible options of our product portfolio, we presented all the feasible door solutions from GEZE. A joint decision was made to use automatic sliding doors with grey-tinted glass leaves and door drives embedded in the ceiling. The sliding door systems meet all the requirements for access convenience and easy handling by the staff. We naturally also took control of coordinating the cooperation between all parties involved in the construction. As a result, the sliding door systems could be installed and put into operation quickly and smoothly.

Features and benefits of automatic sliding doors

With Powerdrive drive systems, GEZE France has created customised automatic sliding glass doors for large door openings:

GEZE products in the Yves Saint Laurent Museum

  • Automatic linear sliding door system for large and heavy door leaves of up to 200 kg leaf weight and opening widths of up to 3000 mm
  • Combined detector for control and protection of automatic sliding doors with four adjustable light curtain configurations
  • Software for integrating the door systems in the building management system, ensuring that the parameters of the automatic sliding door systems can be conveniently set and reliably maintained thanks to automatic fault reports and diagnostic functions