Unlike, say, Milan or New York, Paris isn’t a city that hides its beauty behind closed doors. Most of the French capital’s grand boulevards are, of course, lined with Haussmannian buildings, their stone facades and wrought-iron balconies as elegant as the herringbone parquet floors and marble fireplaces inside. Traditionally, because residents had to ascend these 19th-century buildings using narrow stairways, at least until the arrival of elevators, the second and third levels were the most desirable, with grander proportions and classical layouts. The sixth floor, known for its angular zinc roofline, was reserved for chambres de bonne (maid’s quarters), compact single rooms in which domestic staff once lived and which now might be rented to study-abroad students.
This century, however, young architects and decorators have begun to reimagine the typical Haussmann scheme — even in the wealthy Gros Caillou, a triangular neighborhood of quiet streets bordering the Seine in the Seventh arrondissement. It’s here that the designers Kim Haddou and Florent Dufourcq, 33 and 35, and partners in life and work, were asked two years ago to connect sections of the upper three floors of a large, desirable limestone building to create a pied-à-terre for a French family who lives overseas. The previous owner had acquired several empty chambres de bonne in recent decades; the new inhabitants wanted to combine those disparate rooms with two unrenovated apartments beneath them to create something calming and cohesive. Studio Haddou Dufourcq, which was established six years ago, had received the assignment after making a similar apartment nearby in their signature spare, textured-but-tranquil look for friends of the clients. This one, though, “has three levels, which is pretty uncommon in Paris,” Dufourcq says one March afternoon, sitting on a custom cream-cushioned sofa next to Haddou in the living room on the bottom floor. “The challenge was to make it feel like a house, where you don’t think about these crazy [room] layouts. It was a fun game to figure out.”
In order to unify the 2,150 square feet of “dark, dollhouse-like” spaces, as Haddou describes them, the duo had to move and reconstruct most of the walls, covering them in white plaster — some of which has an undulating ripple — that brightens the tawniness of the refinished oak floors, straw wallpaper and plush beige wall-to-wall carpet that the designers installed on new staircases and in some of the powder rooms. Since the home is used for only a few weeks a year by the family and their visiting guests, the owners “wanted it to feel like a hotel,” Haddou says, noting that there’s one bedroom and bathroom on each level. “If you don’t want to see anyone, you have your own floor.” The lowest one also includes a few common spaces — a sitting and dining area, a library and a galley kitchen (just for breakfast and coffee; no one cooks here) — while the middle floor has a large, handsome office.
But it’s on the top level, given over to the primary suite, that the home, like any good game, offers up several surprises. In the designers’ early plans, the bedroom, owners’ office and dressing area, all in the same warm tones as the rest of the apartment, had been oriented toward the Eiffel Tower: Three west-facing windows offer uninterrupted views of the landmark rising above a handful of low rooftops. “It’s really close,” Dufourcq says. “This is the postcard of Paris everyone looks for.”
On the opposite side of the bedroom, they’d planned for a classic bathroom with a free-standing bathtub. But when the designers began to renovate the ceiling, they unearthed a wall-long glass atrium that had been hidden between layers of wood, insulation and soot since around 1910, when this corner of the building had briefly been an artist’s workshop. After this discovery, the designers convinced the clients that they should replace the glass and dedicate nearly half the floor to a sumptuous loftlike bathing spa clad entirely in Carrara marble, which is grayer and cooler than the materials used elsewhere. “We wanted to stay in the mood with the roofs of Paris, but open it all up and make it something romantic,” Haddou says, after which her partner adds, “More and more, it’s enjoyable to have clients who understand what we’re trying to do.”
The homeowners gave the pair carte blanche, allowing them to choose the art (mostly paintings and drawings in various styles, ranging from Italian Baroque to French Dada) as well as design and fabricate the bespoke furniture in every room, including the lithe wenge wood and stainless-steel dining table, the library’s low brown velvet sofa and the bedrooms’ blocky burled-wood night stands. Fourteen years ago, when the couple met as students at École Camondo, the prestigious Parisian design school where they’d enrolled after growing up in small towns hours from the city, they shared an admiration for each other’s taste and curiosity — but also for turn-of-the-20th-century French architects like Pierre Chareau and Robert Mallet-Stevens, whose holistic practices encompassed everything from small objects to chairs to entire buildings.
In 2018, at Mallet-Stevens’s own Villa Noailles, completed in 1932 in Hyères, 50 or so miles southeast of Marseille, the pair won a design competition that gave them the confidence to leave their jobs at other firms (his at Philippe Starck; hers at Studio CMP) and start their company together. Soon after, they were hired to do a few homes and stores, notably for the luxury brand Hermès, for which they’ve overseen two boutiques in the south of France. Earlier this year, they were also able to expand their shared vision with their first hotel, Lilou, a 37-room Provençal villa built in 1870, where they incorporated the same neutral palette and rustic finishes (pale linen; caramel-toned wood) as at the Parisian triplex. “It’s important to not have something too fashionable or too vintage — to find the right balance,” Dufourcq says. “We like soft places, places in which it’s easy to live. And we mix different styles and periods to make it timeless.” As he talks, Haddou nods along, occasionally finishing his sentences. The real hope, they agree, is that no one walks in and thinks, “Oh, you did this in 2020.”
The post In Paris, an Apartment With Views That Look Like Postcards appeared first on New York Times.
