Working in the colonnade

Barbarito Bancel build Hennessy Village in the Charente

21.10.2026 | 19:17

The “Place du Village” is the heart of the building: double-height, behind amber glass and more than a restaurant. Photos: Alessandra Chemollo

Working with a view: Hennessy Village stands on Hennessy’s bottling site in Salles-d’Angles, surrounded by the vineyards of the Charente.

Timber that carries the load: the prefabricated columns of the structure remain visible in the reception area.

For Hennessy, the Paris practice Barbarito Bancel Architectes has completed a new building in prefabricated timber in the Charente: around 4,000 square metres for work, reception, exhibition and dining. Its most revealing workplaces are found where you would least expect them – on the way there.

Salles-d’Angles, Le Pont Neuf business park. Hennessy operates a bottling site here, with vineyards rolling across the Charente hills all around. Since 2025, the Hennessy Village has stood on this site: a new building with 4,068 square metres of gross floor area, 3,876 of them usable. It was designed by Ivana Barbarito and Benjamin Bancel, whose practice was also responsible for the landscape design. A village in name, it brings offices, reception, exhibition and restaurant together under one roof.

Circulation is organised as a sequence of colonnades, modelled, according to the architects, on a hypostyle hall. Coffee points, alcoves and shared tables turn these passages into more than circulation space. Here, the corridor is not leftover space between two doors but part of what the workplace has to offer.

To the south, the building opens onto the vineyards. The timber galleries on this side are intended to serve both as collaborative space and as passive solar shading. To the north lies a shared garden courtyard around a reflecting pool, where the activities of two buildings come together.

How much cognac can there be in an office building? More than its business-park address suggests. The building is meant to encourage exchange between professions, explicitly including one as sensitive as that of the “nez”. Winegrowers are received at the eaux-de-vie counter, the tasting room is designed for discretion and concentration, and the dining room combines hospitality and workspace.

A corridor with a view: the timber galleries are intended to serve both as collaborative space and as solar shading.

Timber, glass and plenty of daylight also shape the enclosed rooms.

Timber in the stairwell, too. Large-format black-and-white photographs line the walls.

Meeting room with timber panelling and a large black-and-white photograph.

At the centre lies the “Place du Village”, a double-height space behind amber glass that the architects intend to be more than a restaurant. The underside of the canopy is tinted a deep red, which the architects describe as a reference to the amber reflections of cognac. The product, it seems, supplies its own colour palette.

The building is carried by prefabricated timber columns and beams on a regular grid. It was built by GA Smart Building together with timber specialist Ossabois, with structural engineering by Somete. The design is intended to preserve the natural ground and to remain reversible; the building holds HQE “Excellent” certification and the French E+C− label. On an industrial site built to last, it is a building that already anticipates its own dismantling.

For planners and specifiers, the list of trades is instructive: Blomkal and Elypso were responsible for the interior fit-out, the parquet comes from Atelier JCT and the lighting from Odeli. Meta Acoustique handled the acoustics, while studio +fortuna was responsible for signage and exhibition systems.

This is not the practice’s first commission for Moët Hennessy. Barbarito Bancel previously designed the group’s Paris workplaces on the upper floors of Le Bon Marché on Rue de Sèvres – more than 10,000 square metres – and has completed several projects for Dior. In Paris, a historic department store had to become an office. In the Charente, a vineyard across the way and a corridor allowed to be more than a passage were enough.

Project: Hennessy Village