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“We travel to change, not of place, but ideas,” Philosopher Hyppolyte Taine proclaimed. In the case of Thibault and Marine, travel served, above all, to confirm their ideas. In 2022, these two thirty-somethings embarked on the greatest adventure of their lives: a three-month road trip through the American West, far from Paris, where they founded Krabb, their web design studio, after meeting in 2010 in Blois during their multimedia studies. “We’d been thinking about our future apartment for some time, so we took the opportunity to visit Richard Neutra’s VDL House, built in Los Angeles in 1932,” recalls Thibault. “It’s a benchmark of modernism, an architectural approach we’ve always appreciated. The luminosity provided by the large bay windows, the strong presence of wood, the use of that warm honey yellow…” Back in Paris, Marine discovered a post on Sloft’s Instagram account featuring a project by Augure Studio. As well as falling in love with its aesthetic, the couple embraced the agency’s credo, which loves nothing more than designing with what already exists.
Iana Vicq, co-founder of the company with Julie Pommier, explains: “We do this not only for environmental reasons, but also to enhance a context, a history.” Their new clients’ project, involving the complete renovation of a 63 m² apartment they had just acquired in the fast-changing 19th arrondissement, was a perfect opportunity to put this ethos into practice. Above all, the large two-room apartment is on the second floor of the Cantate tower, built in 1970 by German architect Martin Schulz van Treeck as part of the Orgues de Flandre complex. At 101 meters, this building is one of the tallest residential towers in Paris. Iana Vicq explains: “It was previously occupied by an elderly person. We gutted up the whole place, as it was rather old-fashioned. In the bedroom, there was paneling on the walls and polystyrene tiles on the ceiling. In the living room, there was a rather low false ceiling that fell below the beams, which have now been uncovered along with the entire concrete structure.”
Warm wood provides a welcome contrast to the cold concrete, while the white linoleum on the floor, combined with the large windows, ensures that the room is always bathed in light.
At the time of the five-month, 85,000 euro renovation, the family had anticipated the recent arrival of little Paloma: the old kitchen was moved into the living room, with which it now merrily communicates, to make way for a bedroom. As for the storeroom, it has been converted into a laundry room and bicycle garage. And so a new journey begins…
