Hennessy Village Commercial Development in Charente, France
20 October 2026
Architecture: Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Location: ZA Le Pont Neuf, Salles-d’Angles, 16130 Charente, France
photo © Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Photos: Alessandra Chemollo and Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Hennessy Village explores a precise and sensitive architecture, where form does not impose itself but rather reveals itself through the dialogue between landscape, uses, and materiality. The project brings forth an essential, discreet, and shared beauty, capable of transcending cultures through its universality.
photo © Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Embodying Hennessy’s Values
Beyond its function, the project conveys a collective vision: working together, being connected to the territory, transmitting, receiving, living, and tasting.
The hybrid program brings together offices, dining, exhibition, and reception spaces within a clear and adaptable organization. It encourages exchanges between professions, including the most sensitive ones such as the craft of the “nez”, in an environment conducive to transmission and creative stimulation.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
Resonance Between the Vineyard Landscape and the Cognac World
In Salles-d’Angles, the project is rooted in a rolling landscape structured by vineyards. The architecture accompanies the landscape and geometrizes the territory rather than constraining it. Located on a Hennessy bottling ICPE industrial site in immediate proximity to a military air base, the building develops 4,000 m² within a demanding context.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
Composition from Earth to Sky
The building is organized according to a tripartite composition: base, main body, and attic level.
photo © Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Its relationship to the ground is singular: the timber building rests lightly upon it, without anchoring, preserving the integrity of the natural soil while affirming its lightness and reversibility. This transitional space combines climatic comfort, circulation, and contemplation.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
The main body unfolds through a regular structural grid, rhythmically articulated by a gallery of walkways. The attic level rises toward the sky through the elevation of the canopy, whose underside is tinted a deep red evoking the amber reflections of cognac.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
Façades: Between the Inner Garden and the Wider Landscape
The landscape penetrates the interior spaces, which extend toward the horizon.
To the south, the project opens onto the terroir and the vineyards. Here, the façade composed of walkways becomes an active thickness: both a collaborative space and a passive solar protection system. To the north, a shared courtyard garden brings together the activities of both buildings, centered around a reflecting pool that fosters a dialogue between architecture and nature.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
The walkways create a lived-in gallery that encourages interaction, while the openings frame the landscape and anchor the spaces within their surroundings.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
The Art of Hospitality: the Entrance Sequence
The approach to the project is conceived as a welcoming sequence, from landscape to architecture, echoing a culture of hospitality intrinsic to the world of cognac.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
From the parking area, the pathways converge toward the top of an embankment forming a shared forecourt and leading to a walkway that marks the entrance. From this point of balance, the building unfolds toward the garden below and toward the upper levels in a seamless transition between landscape, ground, and architecture.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
Inside, the continuity is reversed: the spaces open first onto the garden and then onto the landscape.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
Order, Structure, Space, and Light
The prefabricated modular timber structure expresses a poetic rationality, supported by a clear grid of columns and beams.
Through spaces provide fluidity, natural ventilation, and a constant relationship to the landscape – distant to the south, inward-looking to the north.
Circulation spaces, designed as true rooms in themselves, unfold like a hypostyle hall formed by a succession of colonnades. They enhance the timber structure and organize movement through the building, offering deep perspectives and visual openings. Coffee points, alcoves, and shared tables enrich the circulation areas and naturally intertwine uses.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
Major Spaces et Hennessy’s savoir-faire
The major spaces break free from the governing order to become moments of exception, strategically positioned at the extremities of the system, like episodes in a narrative.
The Place du Village, beneath a double-height ceiling and amber glass, transcends the function of a restaurant to become a place of conviviality. Other spaces embody the identity of the Maison: the Eaux-de-Vie counter welcomes winegrowers, the tasting room privileges confidentiality and concentration, and the dining room combines hospitality and workspace with simplicity and efficiency.
Sensory Materiality and Envelope Performance
Wood, neither decorative nor effect-driven, expresses a constructive, sustainable, and sensitive architecture in resonance with viticultural culture. Its grain and rhythms create a living material, both visual and tactile. Acoustic performance transforms the building into a refuge, where silence becomes an essential spatial quality.
Energy performance and certifications reflect a global ambition in which environmental excellence becomes a driver of creation.
photos © Alessandra Chemollo
A Place for Living, Working, and Hospitality
Hennessy Village transcends the elementary character of the so-called “tertiary” building typology. Between intuition and method, sensitivity and rigor, the project asserts an elegant architecture that does not seek to demonstrate, but to reveal.
photo © Alessandra Chemollo
An architecture that imagines the obvious and touches, quite simply, emotion.
Hennessy Village Commercial Development in France – Building Information
Architecture: Barbarito Bancel Architectes – https://barbaritobancel.com/
- Location: ZA Le Pont Neuf, Salles-d’Angles, 16130 Charente, France
- Project Type: New construction of office buildings and reception/event spaces
- Phase: Completed in 2025
- Mission: Design and executive architect
Client Team
- Private Client: Hennessy
- Project Management Assistance (AMO): Le Sommer Environnement
- Project Management Assistance (AMO): Shift-in
- Kitchen Engineering Consultant: Alter Restauration Roads and Utilities Engineering Consultant: 3D Infra
- Security and Safety Engineering Consultant: Eryma
- Technical Control Body: Socotec
- Health and Safety Coordinator (CSPS): Qualiconsult
- Fire Safety Coordinator (CoSSI): AI Ingénierie
Design Team
- Construction Management (MOEX): Barbarito Bancel Architectes
- Structural Engineering Consultant: Somete
- Building Services Engineering Consultant (MEP): Cap Ingelec
- Building Envelope Consultant: Loft4
- Acoustics Consultant: Meta Acoustique
- Landscape Design: Barbarito Bancel Architectes
- Visual display systems, signage and wayfinding: studio +fortuna
Contractors
- Lead Contractor Consortium: GA Smart Building
- Consortium Partner: OSSABOIS
- Kitchen Works: Tout Pour Le Froid
- Roads and Utilities Works: Eiffage
- Interior Fit-Out: Blomkal
- Interior Fit-Out: Elypso
- Wood Flooring: Atelier JCT
- Lighting Fixtures: Odeli
- Signage: ADP Enseignes
- Iconography: Co-Nect
- Environmental Strategy: RT2012, HQE Excellent Certification, E+C− Label
- Energy Performance: CEP Coefficient: 70.1 kWh primary energy/sqm
Areas
- Gross Floor Area (GFA): 4,068 sqm
- Net Usable Area (NUA): 3,876 sqm
- NUA / GFA Ratio: 0.95
About Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Imagining the Obvious, Touching Emotion
Barbarito Bancel is an architecture and design studio founded by Ivana Barbarito and Benjamin Bancel. Their approach stems from the meeting of two cultures — Italian and French — and from a constant dialogue between rationality and poetry.
Curious and complementary, they conceive each project as a sensitive and timeless experience, attentive to uses, craftsmanship, and the identity of each place, while deeply listening to the visions and aspirations of every client.
Supported by a multicultural team, the studio develops hospitality, retail, office, and residential projects in France and internationally. Its global vision is progressively tailored through the act of drawing—the architect’s language.
Photography: Alessandra Chemollo and Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Hennessy Village, Charente, France commercial development information / images received 201026 from Barbarito Bancel Architectes
Location: Charente, France, western Europe
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