The Terrassess du Port mall is one the initiatives launched to revitalise the port area of Marseille. In the mall’s prime spot, Empty created a two-storey, 1,000 sqm store for the US technology firm Apple, which Empty has been working with on a regular basis since 2012. The top floor is dedicated to sales while a storeroom, offices and changing rooms occupy the ground floor. With two large store windows—one overlooking the mall and the other the cruise terminal—the store also comprises a 250 sqm new space adjacent to the original building. The construction of this space inside a fully operational mall created an enormous challenge.
From the technical point of view, the most difficult tasks of the project proved to be the finishes, which to a large extent embody the firm’s design concept: custom-made terrazzo floors with a very specific texture (grain) and colour (almost white); and GFRC (glass fiber reinforced concrete) panels—with an appearance to match the floors—supported by a metal structure for interior and exterior walls and part of the ceilings, flat on the mall side and sloping on the port side. Empty also installed the wall furniture and the bronze frame for the luminous ceilings.
