A magazine dedicated to compact interiors

Chloé and Jérémy's modern apartment 60 m² Paris, France Contemporary classic Cosy minimalism Two-bedroom Pseudonyme

This Home Tour is from Sloft Edition 03

Chloé Thomazo and Jérémy Germe met at Paris Val de Seine school of architecture. With their degrees in the bag, they founded their own studio, Pseudonyme Architecture, in 2017. Why the name? Because "by enhancing the existing, by designing in somebody else’s work, we are a bit like architects practicing under a pseudonym." Their studio is located in the Buttes-aux-Cailles neighbourhood in Paris’ 13th arrondissement, a few minutes by foot from their previous rental home. And when the time came to buy their first property, they didn’t want to leave this working-class neighborhood. "We’re both from small towns, so it felt reassuring for us to stay in a part of Paris we already knew well," explains Jérémy.

After visiting several properties, on 17 December 2021 they fell for the charm of a modern 1960s apartment on Boulevard Auguste Blanqui, a five-minute walk from their architectural studio. "The small, compact one-bed-room apartment was spread across 60 square meters, whereas these days this type of property is typically no bigger than 40 square meters!" enthuses Jérémy. Size standards have certainly changed over the past 60 years. On the 7th floor, the apartment is bathed in natural light, with unobstructed views of Place d’Italie below. The one downside? The entrance hall was huge and there was only one bedroom because the kitchen took up a room to itself. But the couple wanted a second bedroom so friends and family could come stay.

Almost all the partition walls were knocked down in order to change the layout: the bathroom and WC were made smaller, storage cupboards were added, and the kitchen was moved to the entrance hall to create space for a second bedroom. The latter change was a bold choice for the homeowners, who have tried hard to blank it out as much as possible by giving it a mirrored splashback, low-level units and a camouflaged cooking area. These ruses helped blend the kitchen into its new décor. The very same décor that Chloé and Jérémy wanted to respect the spirit of the place because "the apartment was designed with love, you can feel it in the details, the generosity of the woodwork, the large windows overlooking the city." They insisted on keeping the mahogany shelving along the windows and the washbasin in the toilet, and even exposing the two concrete posts, the only load-bearing points, by removing their wall coverings. In the bedrooms, the choice of colors is also a nod to the place’s history, with shades from Le Corbusier’s color chart: blue, yellow, green and beige. A real modern palette.