W
ith golden parquet floors, marble fireplaces and French
doors that open on to balconies just wide enough to
enjoy a coffee or a glass of wine while perching on a bistro
chair, this two-bedroom apartment has everything that we have
come to associate with Parisian chic. It occupies the fifth floor
and attic of a handsome stone building designed by the great
French architect Georges-Eugène Haussmann.
Like many 19th-century apartments, however, this
one wasn’t without issues, says François Mille of interior
architecture practice Véronique Cotrel, which specialises
in Haussmann architecture. ‘The focus of these interiors
is always the main sitting room, while the kitchen is usually
small, dark, and far away from
the family areas,’ says François,
who, along with his interior
architect wife Véronique
(after whom the practice is
named), was commissioned
to redesign the apartment by
surgeon Henri Galliard and
his wife Aurore, who have a
young son, Leo. ‘We worked
with the family before on their
previous home in Paris, so we
were involved from the start
and helped them to find this
place,’ says François. ‘So much
was right about it: the windows
and the light, for instance, and
the price was sensible enough
to justify a complete overhaul
of the layout, which was tired.’
Rare for Paris, the flat also
had the potential to expand
into an attic previously used
for storage, and which, further back in the 1800s, would have
been where the servants slumbered under the eaves. ‘The first
thing we had to consider was how to connect the flat to the
attic,’ says François. A few conversations later and a solution
was found. From the hallway, you now step into a new walk-in
wardrobe to reach an oak staircase that swirls up to the attic,
now an office that doubles as a guest room. The entrance to the
walk-in wardrobe is screened by a sliding door which, when
closed, adds to the illusion of a long, elegant hallway.
The previous owners’ legacy was grubby white walls and
a state of disrepair: catnip for François and Véronique who
are known for their even-handed refurbishments. ‘We like to
restore original details, but bring the layouts – and decoration- up to date,’ says François. Starting from scratch, almost all
the walls were removed and the long, thin space reconfigured
to suit the needs of a busy young family. In the sitting room, a
segment of space was stolen to install the new kitchen, where
deep-blue joinery ‘disappears’ into the setting and a bronze
splashback glows like a golden moon by night. Like almost
everything in the apartment, the curvaceous table and chairs
are new, with a bespoke banquette dividing the cooking and
eating areas. Underfoot, the asymmetrical tiles of the kitchen
melt gently into the new parquet floor. ‘That’s the kind of small
but different type of detail we like,’ says François.
They used other clever
devices to add light and make
the most of the 120 square
metre space. An elliptical
internal window in the family
bathroom brings light into
the internal utility room. In the
master bathroom – formerly
part of the master bedroom –
the existing French doors were
incorporated into the room to
become a striking glazed wall.
Arriving on the top floor, what
looks like a large mirror opens
to reveal plentiful storage for
Henri and Aurore’s colourful
collection of shoes.
Exotic footwear aside,
Henri and Aurore came to
the project with ‘almost no
furniture’ but with a strong
sense of ‘what they do and don’t
like,which can be summed
up as colour, bold contrasts and a scattering of glitter’, says
François. The restored fireplace and reinstated cornicing in
the sitting room evoke the Haussmannian spirit but against the
classical backdrop there is fun, too. In the hallway, one wall is
painted a deep blue with a go-faster stripe of yellow wallpaper
providing graphic contrast. A forest-scene wallpaper adorns
the master bedroom like a modern-day mural. There are gentle
curves in the powder-pink bathroom and forget-me-not blue
in the joinery in the child’s bedroom. This is Haussmann, but
just not as you know it.
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See more of François and Véronique’s work at verocotrel.fr
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