Home Office, Private Client, Paris
A private home office commission within a Haussmann-era apartment in Paris, where the ironwork balconies and pale stone facades beyond the tall windows are as much a part of the design intention as anything inside. The brief asked for a workspace of genuine stillness, one that absorbed the particular quality of Parisian morning light, that held the city at a respectful distance, and that drew equally from the Scandinavian tradition of honest craft and the Japanese practice of spaces that clear the mind before the work begins.
Light in a Haussmann apartment is not incidental. It arrives oblique and golden through tall windows, travels across chevron parquet in long parallelograms, and retreats slowly. Every decision in this room was made in relation to it.
The ceiling is the room’s most unexpected gesture. The original plasterwork mouldings remain, and upon them a hand-painted composition unfolds, fluid black lines moving like calligraphy against the white, a ribbed paper globe pendant hanging from its centre. When lit, the ceiling becomes the room’s artwork.
The desk in pale ash holds a shallow tray, a small ceramic bowl, a matte stone vase β objects for working slowly. A lounge chair in warm oatmeal bouclΓ© sits low and sculptural on black metal legs. Behind it, a small walnut stool, the room’s darkest and warmest note. The wall to the right is given entirely to books, floor-to-ceiling pale ash shelving, mostly white and cream spines, a framed black-and-white photograph leaning against the middle shelf. The shelves do not shout their contents. They offer them, quietly.
On the desk, a stone-textured vase of dried pampas grass catches the window light differently at every hour. These are not decorations placed for a photograph. They are objects chosen for how they age.