Cavendish apartment
Located near the Buttes Chaumont park, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris,
this project consists in the complete renovation of a flat of 47sqm of a modernist housing apartments built in 1969.
For this, we rely on the qualities of the existing building: apartments with multiple orientations, transparency. We lean also on the use of sensitive and sensual materials like wood, travertine and concrete in the common spaces.
The crossing character on the space and the continuity of the existing materials are the main research themes of the project.
The plan reflects a simple operating principle. Oriented east-west, we looked to maximize the contribution of natural light within the space by orienting the rooms according to their needs. The apartment is made up of three entities, linked together by a single, continuous floor and ceiling. This continuity is also a visual one in order to affirm the crossing character of the space.
The central part puts together the apartment’s servant functions: the entrance hall and the bathroom, kitchen, storages. Despite their central position, they benefit from borrowed light.
The two side spaces both dispose of large openings. They accommodate the
main functions of the house: living room facing west and bedroom facing east.
The living room-kitchen opens onto a generous loggia overlooking a private garden with tall lush greenery.
The choice of furniture contributes to this desire to give a project overall coherence. Lighting and objects date from the time when the building was built. These modern icons dialogue simply, by their raw materiality and their simple lines with the original architecture. At these designer pieces are added more common furniture, making banality and simplicity the last element of the approche.
In order to optimize the available space, the kitchen is integrated into the living area.
Wooden cabinets and concrete countertop contribute to the overall coherence of the project, an architectural vocabulary used previously. By placing the kitchen at the interface between servant spaces and living room, will allow, in the future, the creation of a third room in the apartment.
The rooms, facing east, are in retreat from the street and with a green courtyard in front. Their privacy, from the rest of the apartment, is ensured by sliding sliding doors, which disappear in the wall when opened, to emphasize the crossing character of this apartment.
The existing windows, a mix in wood and aluminium, are restored to reveal the natural hue of the wood, in order to become a central element of the vocabulary used. Numerous storages in wood veneer, in the same hue as the existing, contributes to the optimization of space.
The depth of the apartment requires a specific work on transparency and natural light. Glass bricks and a large mirror allow light to pass through and to diffuse it in the centre of the apartment.
Working with the spatial depth and the visual interconnection, the research on natural light, the continuous relation with the outside, we sought to sublimate the already there. The choice of materials, which complement and reveal existing ones, or the proposed furniture, contribute to the sensibility of the interior space.
