Steelcase Worklife Paris — The Galaxy Room

The Brief

A narrow meeting room in Steelcase’s Paris showroom that felt compressed despite good finishes. The structural width could not change, so the design had to.

Design Decision

The decision was to work on the wall as atmosphere rather than surface: extracting the colour palette and organic forms from the floor rug and translating them upward as a photomontage of vaporous, amber-toned elements drawn from the perfume reference ‘Behind Or d’Ambre’ — a thick cloud of amber smoke dissipating into twilight.

The chiaroscuro logic of that image became the room’s organizing principle, with dense warm tones at floor level dissolving into lighter, more ethereal forms above. The wall ceases to be a boundary and becomes a continuation of the floor. Technology, furniture, and lighting were absorbed into the language rather than placed against it.

Outcome

Colour bridge from floor to vertical surface.
Chiaroscuro as spatial logic.
Photomontage that opens the room by dematerialising its walls.