Where the Wild Things Are

A 17th-century Paris mansion might just be the least-likely location for this apartment by D’Apostrophe

Ian Phillips -- Interior Design, 11/1/2010 3:19:00 AM

The couple hired D’Haene’s firm, D’Apostrophe Design, to combine and restructure a pair of apartments on the top two floors of a Left Bank mansion. Though it dates to the 1600’s, it was owned until recently by the French government and used to house civil servants. Nothing in these particular apartments had been touched for half a century. “It was really dreadful. There was a complete lack of taste,” D’Haene says, recalling the mildew-laden bathrooms and caked-on layers of paint. The building itself was not in great shape either. For instance, the roof, in terrible disrepair, needed to be partly replaced.

Besides the roof, he avoided major structural work on one side of the 2,800-square-foot space,  realizing that the smaller of the two apartments, on the lower level, could simply become the master suite. It would connect to the rest of the duplex only across the landing of the building’s main staircase, transformed into a private entry with a locked door at the bottom. On the opposite side of the landing, the downstairs could become the living room, den, office, dining room, and kitchen, the upstairs being devoted to a bedroom for the couple’s son, another for his nanny, and a guest room.

One of the owners’ first requests was that he raise the doorways downstairs from 8 1/2 feet to more than 11 to make the most of the high ceiling. He also lined up the doorways to create an unbroken sight line from the master suite through the dining room, an incredible 72 feet from end to end. With that architectural framework established, no decorative details would be added, the better to keep the focus on the art collection. “I like structure and restraint,” he offers.

That restrained aesthetic likewise dictated a certain economy in his choice of materials, all resolutely natural. For flooring and built-ins in the public areas, he used oak, cerused or dark-stained, respectively. He also chose limestone slabs for the bathrooms and linen wall covering for the master bedroom and son’s room. Though he initially painted the other walls white, the owners—who’d previously lived with color in Italy and Latin America--soon changed their minds about the necessity for such a purely gallerylike environment. So D’Haene gave his blessing to a palette based on taupe, rust, and dusty rose.

The owners chose most of the furnishings, including pieces by some of the biggest names in contemporary design: Christian Liaigre, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Fernando and Humberto Campana. A visit to an auction house yielded some mid-century icons for the living room: Jean Royère’s cuddly white Polar Bear sofa and armchairs. Other selections were guided by practicality—the couple have not only a son but also a dog. Take the den’s huge leather-upholstered sectional. “The main criterion was comfort,” D’Haene notes. “Not everything had to be a work of art.”

That said, he maximized uninterrupted surfaces for art display and gave the walls gallery-style baseboard reveals. A pair of Cindy Sherman photos, from her series of garishly colored clowns, were installed in the dining room. In the office, the owners hung a crayon figure drawing by Jean-Michel Basquiat near Jeff Koons’s pink mirrored silhouette of a teddy-bear head, a Soviet suprematist composition in black and gray above an Andy Warhol portrait of Mao Tse-tung. Takashi Murakami’s multicolored, round flower painting was assigned to the living room. The den got a dynamic wall sculpture made from pink stainless-steel tongs.

The piece, D’Haene’s personal favorite, is by a New Delhi artist, Subodh Gupta, who once built a huge skull from pots and pans in the middle of a Paris church. At the top of the stairs up to the duplex, the owners placed another Gupta sculpture. It’s an aluminum suitcase that looks rather like it’s just been set down by an art-loving traveler ready to de­part on his next global voyage.

Photography by Eric Laignel.

PROJECT TEAM
patrocinio binuya: d’apostrophe design. descamps: woodwork. 3ème bureau: general contractor.