Ask Arnaud Behzadi what makes a room work, and he won’t start with the furniture. He starts with listening. The Paris-based architect behind arnaud behzadi architecture treats a space as something that can stir emotion, revive memory and shape how people relate to one another. That only happens when the design is sensitive enough to do it.
Beauty, in his view, is not something we simply look at. It is something we feel, often without knowing why. That idea runs through his furniture collection BAM and through two recent hospitality projects: the reinvention of the Parisian restaurant Doobie’s and Pavyllon Lyon, made with chef Yannick Alléno. The two places differ in character and purpose. Both aim to hold a visitor’s attention after the first look fades.
How arnaud behzadi architecture designs by listening
Behzadi’s process begins before any drawing. “We learn at school to listen, to hear, not so much to watch the space,” he told designboom. He studies materials, light, emptiness and the sensations they produce. Only then does he write what he calls a narrative program, a central idea that guides every later choice.
That method, central to arnaud behzadi architecture, shaped Doobie’s, at 26 Rue Marbeuf in the eighth arrondissement. The restaurant opened in 1938 and became a fixture of Parisian nightlife in the 1990s, a period Behzadi remembers from his own youth. After three years of work, he gave the building a new life without erasing the old one.
“What I remember more than everything was the energy of this place,” he says. “I was really feeling that I was being hosted, that I was home, not that I was being served.” That feeling became the brief.
For another take on rooms that feel personal rather than showy, Intimate Japanese design at Oyado MAS installation offers a quiet, close-scaled contrast worth exploring.
A home rather than a restaurant
Behzadi did not set out to design another fashionable dining room. He looked to the tradition of Parisian private dinners, where artists, politicians, writers and intellectuals sat around one table. He studied the domestic worlds of the Agnellis, François Catroux, and Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Then he imagined Doobie’s as the home of a fictional couple whose belongings had built up over generations.
The plan moves through a sequence of intimate rooms. Guests pass through the Grand Salon, a velvet-lined rotunda, the Petit Salon and the Retour de Voyage, before reaching an indoor garden under a glass roof. Mahogany, stained oak, dark marble and lacquered surfaces set a warm, lived-in mood. Artworks were gathered from gallery visits and from Behzadi’s travels.
“I did it as a home, not as a restaurant,” he says. Each object, he adds, was chosen with the same instinct he would use for his own living room.
The long development turned out to help the project. Structural problems pushed construction back by several months. That delay gave Behzadi time to revisit decisions and refine details he might otherwise have accepted. The nocturnal bar, with its lacquered mahogany and mirrored ceiling, reflects that extra time. So do the downstairs washrooms, where artist Dominic J. Masullo painted a scene inspired by classical antiquity.
For Behzadi, every detail must serve the larger story. “All the details have to have sense and meaning,” he says. Shortly after the reopening, he overheard two guests say that whoever designed the place had clearly put their heart into it. To him, that remark carried more weight than any review.
Pavyllon Lyon and the lesson of restraint
About 460 kilometers southeast of Paris, on Place Bellecour, Pavyllon Lyon carries the same thinking into a different setting. Yannick Alléno and Institut Lyfe run it as the world’s first Pavyllon restaurant-school. It serves the public while giving roughly 600 students a year hands-on training beside professional chefs and hospitality teams.
Here, the hospitality architecture has two jobs. It must impress diners, and it must support teaching. Behzadi watched the students walk into the finished room for the first time. Their excitement affected him deeply. It showed him the atmosphere he had aimed for was reaching the people it was built for.
“Hospitality is first an emotion, not beauty,” he says. He chose not to build a showcase of luxury for the young staff. He wanted proportion, materials and atmosphere to express French hospitality. The dining room works as a stage, where guests can watch chefs and students at work while the architecture stays in the background.
“We were very aligned on not going too much into luxury,” he explains. “And if it’s luxury, it has to be very calm.” In his account, the success of the room depends less on bold gestures than on what happens when people use it, talk to each other and settle in.
Why beauty alone falls short
The work of arnaud behzadi architecture raises a wider question about hospitality design. Many restaurants and hotels chase visual novelty. He argues they should aim to become lasting destinations instead. His goal is a room that guests will still value after ten, fifteen or twenty years.
Restaurant spaces that serve the city as much as the diner also appear in NYC dining sheds in Penny Hardy’s book, a useful companion for anyone weighing hospitality architecture’s public role.
The same concern shapes BAM, the furniture collection from arnaud behzadi architecture. It draws on childhood evenings on rooftops in Tehran, where neighbors met under the stars to talk, drink tea and play backgammon. The collection carries that sense of shared, unhurried time into everyday objects.
Whether he is working on a chair or a restaurant, arnaud behzadi architecture keeps returning to memory, human contact and emotional experience. “Design is a duty and a social responsibility,” he says. Doobie’s and Pavyllon Lyon make the same case. The spaces that stay with us are rarely the ones that demand attention. They are the ones that leave us feeling something worth keeping.
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Frequently asked questions
How does Arnaud Behzadi begin designing a space?
Behzadi starts by listening and studying materials, light, emptiness and the sensations they produce, before any drawing begins. He then writes a narrative program, a central idea that guides every later design choice.
Where is the Doobie’s restaurant that Arnaud Behzadi redesigned?
Doobie’s is located at 26 Rue Marbeuf in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. The restaurant opened in 1938 and became a fixture of Parisian nightlife in the 1990s.
What is Pavyllon Lyon and who runs it?
Pavyllon Lyon is a restaurant on Place Bellecour in Lyon that Yannick Alléno and Institut Lyfe run as the world’s first Pavyllon restaurant-school. It serves the public while giving roughly 600 students a year hands-on training beside professional chefs and hospitality teams.
Why did the Doobie’s renovation take a long time?
The project took three years, and structural problems pushed construction back by several months. That delay gave Behzadi time to revisit decisions and refine details he might otherwise have accepted.
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