He doesn’t, however, mean that he created a replica of a classical nineteenth- century home. To begin with, the apartment didn’t have mouldings or any of the other decorative details of the era to preserve. Its character was in its proportions—“Big entrance, everything square or almost.” “My idea was to create a very low-profile architecture,” says Frederic. “Very simple.” His clients collect art and books. “They are kind people,” he says. “I wanted to create a soft apartment for them.” The apartment, he says, was also to “be a frame for the pieces of art.” He stripped out the previous architectural intervention until he had “an empty box.” The walls, like those of a gallery, are white, with the notable exception of the entrance hall, where they are clad in a very dark, gloss- sealed wood. This reversal of the “white box” is also in the service of art. “The black entrance has been created like that for the Anish Kapoor artworks,” he explains. The luminosity of Kapoor’s acrylic “Space as an Object” sculptures, which look like rapidly rising bubbles trapped and frozen in time and space, are given their full expression in a dark setting. The dark walls make the boundaries or edges of the entrance hall hard to define. They seem to recede, creating a sense of an infinite space that allows the full drama of the void or absence at the centre of these remarkable artworks to find expression.
Although the kitchen is also used for the display of art (the layered resin work, “The Kiss” is by British artist Marilène Oliver), it is also a fully functional, practical space. The apartment’s celebration of natural materials, particularly Carrara marble, wood, and steel, continues in the kitchen, which also is, like the living areas, a white box layered with natural materials and a frame for the art. The kitchen is partially divided from the dining room by display shelves that wrap around the dining area and were designed specifically for the owners’ extensive collection of tableware. “It had to work well as a display, but also be convenient because they really use the kitchen,” says Frederic. The dining table is by Frederic Berthier Design. The Wishbone chairs are by Hans J Wegner for Carl Hansen & Son. The barstools in the kitchen are Philippe Starck for Emeco.
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