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Midnight
By : Lucid Dreams by Dufour
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 17th edition
Discipline : Interior Design
Categories : Culture, Sport & Leisure / Event Design & Ephemeral Installation : Platinum Winner
Categories : Special Awards / Interior Design + Collaboration : Gold Certification
« Midnight », the Empire of the senses
The Sanctuary of Notre-Dame du Sacré-Coeur, a precious historical ensemble of Old Quebec, composed of a neo-Gothic style chapel, a presbytery and a vast plot of land bordered by fortifications, was closed to worship and then sold in 2016. Its new owner has undertaken its conversion into an elegant single-family residence, interconnected to the magnificent little chapel, preserved down to the smallest detail. In the summer of 2022, at the end of an imposing construction project, the latter contacted the designer and director Olivier Dufour and his studio Lucid Dreams with a particular request. On the occasion of a private event which will be held on the premises and to which only around thirty close friends will be invited, he offers Olivier Dufour an absolute carte blanche: to create, within the walls of this reincarnated heritage jewel, a unique experience, an evening that is nothing like what its guests have already experienced, all of whom are avid travelers and accustomed to the most sophisticated epicurean experiences. The order is clear but ambitious: the guests must be amazed, destabilized and transported into a multisensory adventure in which the Sanctuary will be both the scene and the main character. There is only one imperative: the surprise must be total, both for the customer and for his guests.
Conceptually, the entire narrative of « Midnight » unfolds around one key idea: this private, highly exclusive event doesn’t take place in our client’s newly renovated property, but rather in a world on the bangs of our reality, an intangible territory hidden in the bowels of Old Quebec, and only accessible for the duration of an evening.
For « Midnight », Olivier Dufour will bring together a team of over 90 artists, craftsmen and high-level professionals to create a completely original and totally immersive experience. Seven months of creation and production and one month of installation on site will be necessary to develop the ambulatory route, the artistic performances, the multimedia environments, the gastronomic experience and the different scenographic universes unfolding within the grounds of the Sanctuary and the neighboring streets. The complex’s 260-square-meter underground parking lot will be transformed into a surreal forest by the installation of two hundred and fifty living trees, several tons of earth, a dummy rock weighing over 300 kg floating above a vast body of water, a rich collection of antique furniture and objects, an imposing multimedia infrastructure and a whole menagerie of live animals. In the chapel, transformed into an immersive cabaret, a gigantic ogive-shaped aluminum frame underpinning a semi-transparent projection screen and embracing the building’s slightest architectural details will serve as the boundary between choir and nave, between the real and the virtual. Overcoming all the obstacles of a production of this scale in such a fragile and precious setting, the team will go so far as to modify the very structure of the vault of the chapel to support the lifting system for the acrobatic and scenographic elements required by the staging and deploy high lighting towers on the grounds around the building to create, through the stained glass windows, the illusion of the sun rising in the middle of the night. Here, design is at the service of the experience, telling a story.
Collaboration
Scenography : Olivier Dufour, Lucid Dreams by Dufour
Project Manager : Marie-Christine Guimont
