The Philharmonie des enfants is a space of sound and musical experimentations, conceived for children from 4 to 10 years old. Located inside the Philharmonie de Paris, thirty original installations, to be discovered in autonomy, invite to a journey appealing both to body and mind. Without any prerequisite of knowledge or practice, this experience allows to create a first sensitive and playful contact with music. 

This exciting adventure, which gathered more than 300 contributors during four years, has been a unique occasion to work on a project from the global conception of the space to the small details of the games design. Each set has been conceived in collaboration with multiple experts (ethnomusicologists, instrument makers, artists…). 

Children and adults are invited to dive into a colorful atmosphere, full of sensations and interactions. Each space suggests an abstract and fun mood, yet never infantilizing. A specific work on the acoustic promises comfort to every user’s journey. The tour begins with the discovery of a spectacular corridor, with a forest of anechoic tentacles leading to a bell with a reflected echo. It conducts to a central plaza bathed in colorful light, where everybody can discover stories coming out of periscopes planted in the ground. This room is like a comfortable lookout tower from which parents can watch their children evolve freely in each of the spaces distributed in a star shape. 

Each part of the tour gathers installations with diverse themes. They can be identified easily thanks to soft colors. A flow of colorful bubbles gently guides the visitors to the exit once all the activities have been experienced. As this is a public space, the project has to be easy to maintain. Attention to sustainability over time was an essential point in the design process. 

It led to technical choices, such as proposing essentially low-tech installations, and thus limiting planned obsolescence and the complex recycling of computer components. It was also chosen to limit single-use elements as much as possible: there are no entrance tickets or leaflets. Each installation has also been conceived to be as resistant as possible, with easy maintenance, in order to last over time. It can be dismantled in order to replace any defective elements without having to change the entire installation.