Braque
RESIDENTIAL · Paris 14th, Parc Montsouris · 2022 · 250 m² · Renovation of an apartment in the Villa Guggenbühl, André Lurçat, 1926
A street running along the Parc Montsouris, and cubes of reinforced concrete interlocked one into another: the Villa Guggenbühl, built in 1926 by André Lurçat, a disciple of Mallet-Stevens, for the Zurich painter Walter Guggenbühl. Inside, a large studio; on the roof, a terrace given over to physical exercise. The house was divided into two apartments in the 1970s. The studio worked on the upper one, for a family of four, with a free hand.
The subject was not the decoration but the plan. The apartment runs over three levels and divides in height rather than in width: a tiny entrance, a staircase up to a first bedroom, another up to the kitchen and dining room on the mezzanine, then a few more steps back down to the living room. The main bedroom took the place of the former dining room, at the very top, in a conservatory that had to be reinforced. The terrace opens beyond it, under the perforated concrete overhang, above the trees of the park.
Material holds the whole. Stained varnished maple runs from one level to the next, and a bronze smoked mirror picks up its tone to bring it out, each material set off by the next. The tall bay window Lurçat cut to break the flatness of the façade lights the living room, whose fitted joinery wraps the bench seat and the bar. The dining room was treated as a terrace open onto the garden. The Smoking ashtray sits there.
Photography Lucas Madani
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