A magazine dedicated to compact interiors

Some places are just impossible to resist. For Charles, Harrods Village—Harrods’ former furniture warehouse on the Thames—was a long-held dream that finally came true. After a failed purchase, this apartment suddenly appeared: views of the gardens, plenty of natural light … and the promise of a wonderful life.

Renovating an old two-bedroom attic apartment to turn it into a one-bedroom apartment with a double exposure and a focus on reuse: in Montmartre, Parisian architect Flore Bellanger has created a striking space that combines common sense with aesthetic sensibility.

“I acquired this property in 2019; until then, the entire building had been used for rental purposes. Its rooms were irregularly shaped, separated by a central hallway, and both the layout and the materials were outdated: the fixtures and fittings had seen better days, and the white tiles were completely uninspiring,” explains Luc Pfister, founder of the architecture firm that bears his name. Yet, that laundry list of flaws didn’t discourage the thirty-something when it came to his first real estate purchase.

Among the narrow streets and shared gardens, a neglected 30-square-meter space is reinvented under the vision of Quentin Sommervogel. In this corner of the capital’s 20th arrondissement, the architect turned constraints into an intimate manifesto for everyday living.

In the photos on the Leboncoin website, the apartment didn’t look like much. Three dark shots, a stale floor, decrepit walls. ” Fortunately, my partner Muriel had the motivation to go and see it, because I was afraid it would be a waste of time,” says Lucas! Located on the seventh floor of a 1970s building in the capital’s 20ᵉ arrondissement, the apartment had been squatted for two years after the owner died. ” Everything had been removed – floor carpets, parquet flooring, etc. The walls were literally falling apart ! “