BRACH Paris – Evôk Collection | France
Philippe Starck’s Layered World in the 16th Arrondissement
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● Philippe Starck transforms a former 1970s postal sorting centre into a richly layered hotel where Bauhaus geometry, African craft, and French decorative references coexist.
● Rosewood, mirrors, marble, brass, art books, masks, and collected objects give the rooms the atmosphere of private, highly personal interiors.
● A 23-metre pool, sports club, rooftop garden, and one of the city’s liveliest hotel restaurants make BRACH feel like a complete urban world.
A New Life for a Modernist Building
BRACH occupies a former postal sorting centre in Paris’s traditionally reserved 16th arrondissement. Rather than disguise the building’s 1970s origins, Philippe Starck uses its strong modernist structure as the framework for something far more theatrical. Raw concrete, generous volumes, and rigorous lines are softened by velvet, leather, polished brass, warm timber, and an extraordinary collection of art and objects. The architecture remains disciplined. The interiors refuse to behave.
A Carefully Choreographed Disorder
Starck’s design draws from Bauhaus rationalism, château grandeur, African craft, and the atmosphere of a collector’s home. Art Brut prints, carved stools, Masai beadwork, surrealist photography, marble vessels, sculptural furniture, and vintage pieces appear throughout the public spaces. Above them, a monumental ceiling work by Ara Starck adds another layer to the composition. Nothing is arranged to feel perfect. Everything is placed to provoke curiosity. The result is expressive, sensual, and deeply personal.
Rooms That Feel Collected
The guestrooms balance visual richness with remarkable calm. Rosewood panelling, mirrored surfaces, soft carpets, oversized headboards, books, masks, ceramics, and framed sketches create spaces that feel assembled over time rather than completed all at once. Warm lighting and generous windows soften the stronger architectural gestures. Bathrooms are wrapped in marble and punctuated by stone basins, cacti, and polished metal. The suites extend outdoors with planted terraces, hot tubs, dining spaces, and views towards the Eiffel Tower. Luxury feels lived in.
A Restaurant with Its Own Rhythm
BRACH’s restaurant is central to the life of the hotel. Chef Adam Bentalha brings Mediterranean and Levantine influences to an open kitchen that remains active from breakfast until late evening. Eggs Benedict with Label Rouge salmon, saffron arancini, kafta, labneh, and generous sharing dishes reflect a menu built around warmth rather than formality. The room attracts hotel guests, local residents, creatives, and business diners in equal measure. It feels less like a destination restaurant. More like an exceptionally stylish neighbourhood canteen.
A World Beneath the City
Below ground, BRACH reveals one of its most distinctive spaces. The sports club takes inspiration from the physical culture of a 1930s New York gym, combining serious training facilities with a 23-metre swimming pool, a second plunge pool, sauna, hammam, salt grotto, and Clarins treatment rooms. The atmosphere is strong, cinematic, and unexpectedly intimate. Wellness here is not decorative. It is part of the architecture.
Why It Works
BRACH Paris succeeds because it turns contradiction into character. Modernist structure meets decorative excess, physical discipline sits beside sensual comfort, and a residential neighbourhood becomes the setting for one of Paris’s most energetic hotels. Starck’s design never settles into a single style. Instead, it creates a world of its own—layered, cultured, theatrical, and unmistakably alive.
