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“I don’t know, maybe it’s because I lived in an artist’s studio with my parents for a long time, in the 14th arrondissement… I must have retained a special attachment to this type of place,” says Antoine, as he stirs his espresso at the Petit Café de Montmartre, one of his haunts in his neighborhood of Les Abbesses.
This is the first explanation that comes to mind when asked why he was so determined to preserve the spirit of the apartment he acquired in 2022, and to which he pays astonishing deference. It has to be said that it was – for over fifty years – the home of a Brazilian painter who was well known in the area.
A design enthusiast, 35-year-old Antoine, who works “in start-up financing” and has always loved unusual spaces, saw the potential of this one from the moment he saw it. It has to be said that the light that bathed it is impressive. As artist’s studios often are, it is north-facing (to ensure that the light doesn’t wash out the works of art,) ensuring fairly even lighting throughout the day.
Antoine decided to call on Agathe Marimbert, an architect friend, to remodel the space, which hadn’t been touched in years: “there were paintings on the ceiling, wood paneling, a wooden mezzanine. It was a little … busy,” she recalls. “However, the double-height ceiling and large window gave the apartment a real cachet. The opening onto Rue Burq, directly opposite, is quite magical. It’s easy to imagine living here in the 1960s, in the heyday of Montmartre artists’ studios.”
To make this dream a reality, the first step was to rethink the floor plan, adapting it to Antoine’s needs.
Because, although the studio included a small kitchen and bathroom, the painter didn’t actually live there. “Once we had our new floor plan, we chose materials that would interact with the Rue des Abbesses, as a sort of dialogue,” says Agathe. “It was important to include the fact that the neighborhood is very much food-forward, which Antoine is very fond of.” As a result, touches of stainless steel weave their way through the light wood of the kitchen to echo the counters of the surrounding cafés. The green tiles in the shower room echo the floors of café WCs and bistro kitchens. Steel, used on the staircase, the large glass wall and the shower room door, also pays homage to these places. These materials are also typical of those once chosen to build artists’ studios – the circle of life, quoi!
