“This 657-square-foot residence on Paris’s Boulevard Richard Lenoir is all mine. I purchased it two and a half years in the past and it’s in a traditional stone constructing,” Juliette Rubel, architect and inside designer, tells AD. She has already famous her longtime want to design an residence in a Haussmann-style residence. To take action in her new digs, she restructured the house’s bones to configure two rooms as an alternative of three, creating an open kitchen that faces the lounge. The culinary house additionally serves as a bar, which maximizes the quantity of leisure space relative to the general dimension of the residence. An present arched opening impressed her to create the toilet door and the passageway from the doorway to the lounge, which passes by means of a mirrored archway that echoes the arched home windows of the lounge. “It’s in a somewhat modern fashion that contrasts properly with the moldings, fire, and cornices of the residence,” Rubel says admiringly.
Making house for a lounge
Rubel used solely pure supplies in her redesign of the residence. Stone seems within the kitchen and toilet—Brazilian quartzite and Calacatta marble—on each the flooring and built-in components, just like the bar and bathtub. Beige paint on the partitions is mirrored in wall mirrors that seize the sunshine coming in by means of the home windows. “The thought was to create a way of depth and to create the phantasm of a room that’s bigger than it’s,” Rubel says by means of clarification of the optical phantasm. “I used mirrors to replicate the moldings. It’s additionally a method of lightening the built-in components, just like the storage unit within the kitchen.”
The unique herringbone parquet flooring has been salvaged—although it has been sanded—and results in the culinary house, which, seen from the eating space, seems like a small bar-restaurant. “That was the objective,” Rubel says. Regardless of its dense materiality, the graphic, elevated bar set up provides a way of lightness to the house. Its body is in darkish oak, just like the legs of the desk—which was designed by the architect—in addition to the cabinets of the bookcases, and, most notably, the lengthy bench that runs underneath the home windows of the big frequent room. It additionally gives invaluable storage in a small house. Its lowest shelf is open, not solely to show objects, but additionally to permit the residence’s three home windows to be seen from the doorway. Thus, the sensation of open house within the room is additional enhanced.
Surprising materials drenching
The bench each hides the radiators and gives casual seating for guests. It permits the house to be reconfigured as wanted and might function seating for the eating desk, which slides alongside the bench to create an adaptable piece of furnishings. The highest of the eating desk is made from silvery Brazilian quartzite—the identical stone used for the island and flooring. The fabric is right for each prep and consuming, as a result of its materials resistance to acid. The architect additionally used the quartzite on the partitions, making a strong second of coloration cohesion.
Within the toilet, Calacatta marble stands out with its shades of beige and brown. Rubel was drawn to the precise slab of fabric, realizing items of it are sometimes rejected as a result of its patterning. “It’s a kind of Calacatta that isn’t significantly elegant, however I just like the contrasts it creates. The thought was to spotlight the stone and let the remainder of the inside replicate it, so I labored with mirrors that present totally different views of the marble.” For the partitions, the architect selected to “calm issues down” with a lightweight waxed concrete that’s paired with the veined, textured marble within the toilet. The fixtures are copper-colored, echoing the sinks, bathtub, and flooring, whereas a barely smoked mirror gives orange reflections. The spherical mirror additionally contrasts with the straight traces of the toilet and echoes the arch of the door.
