Rue Veneau Apartment
Paris, France
This Project is in a late 70s building apartment the 7th neighbourhood in Paris, for a French couple and their daughter. The apartment had three bedrooms, one directly accessed by the main hallway and the other two shared a private hall. The couple wanted to maintain the amount of rooms and wanted to add a social bathroom. This was couple had a very bohemic spirit and it was important to them that the flat reflected their way of living that space, airy and integrated. Furthermore, the couple wanted their home to complement their art collection with raw materials and warm woods. Their social agenda reflected the need of having a separated kitchen, and a spacious entrance hall. The apartment originally had a large verrieres and balcony facing a public garden with beautiful greenery that would come in the living room.
This project for us was a challenge because we understood that it would be about architectural pieces of design and artistic composition space, textures and materiality. In our first meeting they expressed their love for travel and in particular, their love for travelling by train. We though to bring this spirit inside their home, and this inspired us to create a warm wooden panelling that would enclose large closet space and the kitchen, with a flute textured glass windows on the sliding doors similar to train cabin doors. This glass was purposely chosen to both hide the kitchen letting the light come through and to give this sensation of a moving train car. Opposite to the kitchen door a bench element covered in a carpet texture was designed to serve as a room divider between the entrance and the living room, and in a similar manor a standalone bookshelf and desk also create an interface between the hallway and the dining area. Due to the antique heating systems the apartment level was slightly higher than the veranda which led us to propose a long bench and seating area which would serve to the inside living area and the exterior veranda. This bench would be in natural stone to both contrast and compose with materials of the fireplace and furniture.
A designed sculptural element comes to cover the original fireplace that would give the room a focal point. This fireplace was covered by a hand-made tile with a cracked effect in off white which when not being used would also be reflect the movement of the trees and light inside the living area. In order to make reference to this element, we also used the same tile to cover the social bathroom which was purposely curved. The kitchen in a corridor disposition was thought in a rough rugged textured granite which leads to a booth seating area next to the window. The rooms were kept in a similar texture palate and give unity to the apartment as a whole.
