Gentle Mates Gaming House | ZYVA Studio | Anthony Authié

A gaming house with multiple worlds Moving from one universe to another like leveling up in a game.

That’s the founding idea behind the Gentle Mates Gaming House, imagined by Zyva Studio for the e-sport team Squeezie, Gotaga, and Brawks.

A place conceived as a succession of parallel worlds, where each space tells a rhythm, a sensation, a state of mind. From honey wood to neon pink, from calm to chaos, from raw material to artificial light, an architecture of play, collage, and motion.

An immersive entrance

The entrance sets the tone: a tunnel clad entirely in honey-stained ash wood, a single continuous material from floor to ceiling. Here, the wood becomes an infinite surface that wraps around the body and erases spatial boundaries.

Three embedded neon lines cut through the space like loading bars. This area was designed as a Hall of Fame. Walking through it reveals the team’s jerseys from different seasons, their victories, trophies, and cups. It’s a mental preparation zone, a loading chamber, a breath before entering the game.

“I wanted the entrance to feel like a loading zone. A threshold before the game. Something peaceful, almost sacred, before the body goes into motion.”

The main space: from patchwork effect to smoothed treatment

The central area juxtaposes textures and materials like a patchwork. Raw concrete beams coexist with metallic surfaces inspired by car garages, while greige-painted walls dialogue with candy- pink accents.

At the center, large planted modules merge into the kitchen benches and even the coffee table, filled with white pebbles.

Plants grow there as if in buffer zones, between the living and the mineral. The concrete floor contrasts with the wooden one in the living room and kitchen, where embedded LED strips trace continuous lines, a nod to the lighting system of the entrance.

Here, some of the technical elements are intentionally visible: pink powder-coated ventilation ducts act as graphic punctuation across the ceiling. Function becomes ornament.

Scrolling LED panels display real-time team updates: recent wins, upcoming tournaments, players’ birthdays. Referencing cyberpunk aesthetics, this device goes beyond décor, it’s both information tool and identity marker.

This patchwork of elements beneath the glass roof strengthens the project’s duality: on one side, wood-clad, calm, almost Japanese-inspired spaces (entrance, living room, kitchen); on the other, a fragmented, chaotic, multiple world.

“We wanted to maximize the contrast between the kitchen/living zone and the glass-roof area, so that when you stand between the two, you almost feel like you’re in two places at once, caught in the middle of a space-time glitch.”

Candy-core and performance

In the gym and locker rooms, the world shifts to monochrome pink, a continuous, saturated hue from floor to ceiling.

On the ground, a pink-and-green checkerboard pattern reintroduces the notion of speed, a wink to racing flags, while staying within the Gentle Mates color direction.

These Candy-core spaces stand out through their visual intensity, made possible by their limited use: locker rooms, bathrooms, passageways.

“I liked the idea of taking highly stereotyped spaces, like a gym, and flipping expectations. Gyms are usually hard, metallic, full of testosterone. It felt almost logical to reinterpret them with a counterintuitive softness: pink monochrome, warm wood, mirrors rounded like cotton candy or clouds.”

The basement: artificial light and sensitive camouflage

Descending, a custom pink powder-coated steel staircase echoes the perforated patterns of the shelving and desk legs. The hallways continue the honey-wood motif, creating visual continuity. But the training rooms immerse players in a futuristic beige monochrome. Ceilings are made of luminous stretch fabrics, adjustable in color and intensity, diffusing a constant, soft, enveloping light, like a fake sky underground. An intentional illusion, designed to offset the lack of natural light and build a parallel sense of time.

“I like when a place lies a little. Here, it’s always daytime, even at night.”

Details: the Zyva vocabulary

Everywhere, the studio’s signature grammar appears: 3D-printed handles covered in spikes, cable grommets sculpted like bullet impacts, sharp-edged volumes with bold finishes. Each element tells a fragment of a story, halfway between cartoon and science fiction.

“These details are like our own language. Little winks for those who like to play with forms and sensations.”

Between virtual and real

The Gentle Mates Gaming House is a place of play, but also of work, performance, and connection. A space where the virtual takes physical form, where light becomes scenography, and where technique becomes aesthetic. An architecture that plays by its own rules, between raw wood and neon pink, between softness and intensity, between reality and simulation.

“This project is an architecture of transition. Moving from one world to another, that’s my way of talking about the present.”

Location / Paris

Architect / Zyva studio

Area / 300sqm

Completion / 2025

Credit pictures / Yohann Fontaine