Schuman’s Project by Rodolphe Parente
Housed in a 1930s Art Deco building near Les Invalides in Paris, French interior designer Rodolphe Parente strikes a nuanced balance between tradition and contemporary flair. The result is a home shaped by contrasts, meticulous craftsmanship and a subtle rebellious spirit.
The owner, a creative and long-time friend, shares Parente’s generational outlook and instinct for unexpected beauty, making the design one of trust, mutual curiosity and creative freedom. “He was drawn to my Contre Soirée installation from 2022,” Parente reflects. “That pastel pink kitchen and wooden bathroom sparked ideas that we evolved—a tension between rigour and warmth, structure and playfulness.”
Rather than reworking the apartment’s original layout, Parente chose to preserve its natural spatial flow. The tone is set immediately in the entryway, where Jasper Morrison’s Mirror Mirror console for Glas Italia and Ettore Sottsass’s Ultrafragola mirror play with light and reflection, introducing a touch of the unexpected. Colour is treated volumetrically, shaping space by carving the apartment into quiet layers that subtly shift as one moves through.
Saint Germain Apartment by Pierre Lacroix
When a couple in their sixties acquired a historic apartment in the heart of Paris that hadn’t been touched in a century, they knew exactly who to call to bring it back to life. “I had already worked with them in a previous apartment, which was completely different,” French interior designer Pierre Lacroix says. “When they purchased this new home, something much more personal for them, they got back in touch.”
Set within an 18th-century heritage building in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood—an area known for its literary cafés and artistic heritage—the apartment had remained in the same family for generations. For Lacroix, this sense of continuity became a guiding force. “We even discovered old documents hidden within the walls,” he recalls, “tangible traces of the past.”
Several original features were preserved and integrated into the updated interiors, including arched doorways, marble elements in Green Alpine, Portoro and Breccia Capraia, and finely crafted woodwork. These were paired with more contemporary brushed brass and stainless steel finishes, creating a measured dialogue between old and new. The doors, framed with plaster and wood transoms, form a visual thread throughout, grounding the interiors in their architectural origins while supporting the home’s renewed rhythm and flow.
Foch by Atelier MKD
Flamboyant interiors aren’t the only way to seduce the eye in a Parisian residential revamp. Atelier MKD architect Marika Dru makes a compelling case for minimalism in Foch, a renovated 1950s-60s apartment near the Champs-Élysées.
In a word: curves. Formerly a complex mix of architectural styles and elements, Atelier MKD reconceived the heritage residence with a floor plan based on cohesive, curved spaces that are generous yet singular and intimate. Here, subtlety means a blend of heritage and modernity, observed in structural elements such as light-reflecting mineral plaster walls with original curved accents, and rooms transformed into cocoon-like spaces that amplify the residence’s minimalistic interiors.
A gourmand palette of whites and creams is ‘monochrome’ at its most mellow. Its atmosphere is enhanced by Dru’s signature approach to materiality, with Roman plaster and Sainte-Croix stone placed in dialogue with Chantilly parquetry and abundant textiles.
JACOB by Nathan Baraness
Tucked away within the Paris streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, JACOB by Nathan Baraness is an apartment reimagined as a characterful retreat. In JACOB, books, art, colour, pattern, and materiality collide, echoing the cultural volumes of its past.
Each room is neither traditional nor contemporary in its aesthetic. The living room feels warm, with terracotta tones of the Mario Bellini Camaleonda velvet sofa bouncing off the yellow velvet Pierre Frey banquette seat, disguising the radiator beneath. Alongside it, brightly coloured books beg to be read in the dappled sunlight overlooking the neighbouring Parisian rooftops. A vintage studded armchair and 1970s magazine rack by Giotto Stoppino add layers of personality to the space, grounded by a fireplace and striking 1940–44 bronze sculpture by Aristide Maillol, Étude pour Harmonie.
Connecting each space effortlessly—but not overtly—are the unique pieces of art and sculpture that carry from living room to bedroom, from bedroom to study, and so on. We see more of Aristide Maillol’s bronze works: the 1900 Baigneuse debout on the opposite side of the living area, and the 1905 Torse de Méditerranée sitting proudly on the study desk adjacent to the bedroom, inviting us to take a seat on the Mart Stam Cantilever chair.
Fromentin by RMGB
In Montmartre—the Parisian neighbourhood known for its cobblestone streets and artistic history—RMGB has redesigned a family duplex distinguished by its play of light, generous proportions, art, and finely crafted materials.
“From the interior architecture to the selection of every single object, we were involved in every aspect of this space,” RMGB co-founder Guillaume Gibert says. “The homeowners—he works in tech, she’s a lawyer—were both deeply dedicated to their careers and wanted a fluid, easy-to-live-in environment, yet one that still offered moments of surprise.”
RMGB’s close collaboration with artisans is evident in every room, from built-in storage and bookcases to the furniture designed specifically for the project. The solid oak dining table, for instance, was conceived by the duo and paired with vintage P60 chairs by Antoine Philippon and Jacqueline Lecoq, newly upholstered in Dedar fabric. In the salon, a generously proportioned sofa faces a pair of Bernard Govin armchairs and a bespoke glazed lava-stone coffee table.
