Gentle Mates Gaming House by ZYVA Studio
Gentle Mates Gaming House draws visitors through a sequence of charged interiors in Paris, France, devised by ZYVA Studio for a professional esports collective. Set up as a leisure-focused gaming house, the project layers honey-toned wood, neon light, and candy-core color to mirror the psychological shifts of competition. Each level stages a different tempo, from calm preparation to hyper-focused play, while keeping the team closely connected.
Honey-stained ash wraps overhead and underfoot as visitors step into the tunnel, so the first contact is with warm grain rather than screens or logos. Three sharp neon lines slice through the enclosure, like loading bars suspended in midair, pulling the body forward toward the rest of the house.
This gaming house in Paris is conceived by ZYVA Studio as a leisure-oriented base for a professional esports team. The project organizes daily life around a sequence of interiors, each with a distinct palette and emotional charge that aligns with preparation, social time, or performance. Material contrast and light shifts carry the narrative more than walls do, turning the journey from entrance to basement into a kind of level progression.
Crossing The Loading Tunnel
The entrance reads as a Hall of Fame, where ash wood folds into a continuous tunnel and dissolves corners into a single warm envelope. In this cocoon, jerseys, trophies, and cups line the route, so the team literally walks past their own history before training or competition. Three embedded neon stripes cut through the timber and act as luminous guides, echoing the digital loading screens that precede every match. It stays quiet and almost ceremonial here, a deliberate pause before bodies and minds accelerate.
Patchwork Under The Glass Roof
Beyond the tunnel, the main volume flips from singular material to layered collage. Raw concrete beams share sightlines with metallic surfaces reminiscent of car garages, and greige walls trade glances with candy-pink accents that keep the room from feeling neutral. At the center, planted modules rise from the floor and fold into kitchen benches and a coffee table, where white pebbles and greenery introduce a slower tempo between screens. The concrete floor gives way to wood in the living room and kitchen, where linear LEDs are set into the boards, a quiet echo of the entrance lighting that traces movement.
Overhead, pink powder-coated ventilation ducts remain proudly visible and act as graphic punctuation, turning technical infrastructure into color bands across the ceiling. Scrolling LED panels deliver real-time team updates, from tournament schedules to birthdays, borrowing from cyberpunk signage yet functioning as practical communication. The glass roof above intensifies this duality: calm wood-clad living zones sit beside a more chaotic, industrial collage, so standing between them feels like occupying two game environments at once.
Candy-Core Training Worlds
In the gym and locker rooms, the palette snaps to monochrome pink, a saturated hue that runs continuously from floor to ceiling. On the ground, a pink-and-green checkerboard pattern nods to racing flags and speed, tying physical exertion to the adrenaline of competition. These candy-core rooms are used sparingly for intense moments only, concentrated in locker rooms, bathrooms, and transitional corridors rather than everyday lounging. Warm wood and rounded mirrors soften the expected toughness of training environments, trading cold metallic cues for a visually playful yet controlled backdrop.
This inversion of typical gym imagery shifts how performance is framed. Instead of hard black rubber and chrome, athletes stretch and prepare inside a field of color that disarms clichés and clears mental noise. The result is not softness for its own sake, but a rebalanced atmosphere where bodies work hard within an almost cartoon-bright setting that still respects routine and focus.
Basement Light And Camouflage
A custom steel stair, powder-coated in pink and perforated to mirror shelving and desk legs, leads down to the training level. Hallways continue the honey-wood motif from above, tying circulation together with familiar grain and warmth. Inside the practice rooms, however, the mood shifts again to a soft beige monochrome that quiets peripheral distraction. Luminous stretch-fabric ceilings wash the rooms in adjustable light, creating a fake sky underground that stays stable regardless of time outside.
This artificial daylight builds a parallel sense of time, important for players whose schedules don’t align with the sun. Light color and intensity can be tuned so long sessions feel less punishing, even when matches run late into the night. The beige envelope functions almost like camouflage for equipment, letting screens and hardware sit within a steady field rather than dominate the eye.
Tactile Details And Gameplay
Across the house, small objects extend ZYVA Studio’s internal vocabulary. Door handles are 3D-printed and covered in spikes, giving a quick jolt of texture the moment a hand reaches out. Cable grommets sculpted like bullet impacts freeze a moment of cinematic action in solid material, a sly nod to in-game ballistics. Sharp-edged volumes finished in bold surfaces act as wayfinding markers, helping players orient themselves without relying solely on signage. Each detail carries a fragment of story, so walking through the rooms feels like uncovering easter eggs for those who notice.
Together, these moves knit virtual and physical worlds into one layered environment. Warm wood, neon pink, metallic gleam, and programmable light each play a defined role rather than compete. The gaming house becomes a place for work, play, and shared narrative, where transitions between calm and intensity are written in color and texture rather than words.
Photography by Yohann Fontaine
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