From a dwelling on two levels and balconies from the 1960s, the architect Caroline Rigal has designed a comfortable and fluid duplex which is teeming with storage ideas with a softened aesthetic.
Project: private apartment
Location: Vincennes, Val de Marne
Area: 60 m2
Year: 2019
The apartment is made up of two 25 m2 floors joined by a narrow staircase. For this first interior design project, Caroline Rigal decided, from the start, to separate the functions: the sleeping area upstairs, the day area on the ground floor. Another particularity is that it has kept the two landing doors on each level, which give access to the duplex. One of them upstairs, which cannot be condemned, is hidden behind a line of storage: the door is accessible if necessary. The new distribution of rooms has made it possible to create a bathroom now located upstairs, while reducing the surface area of the (too) large guest bedroom. The other bedroom remains unchanged.
The ground floor has undergone significant transformations. On the one hand, the well-equipped kitchen is semi-open to the dining area, equipped with shelves and then the living room, while the load-bearing wall, a compact design element, incorporates a flat screen with all the connectors and narrow shelves. On the other hand, a separation, with a library on one side and a wardrobe on the other, has been created, which tightens the living room, which has become more intimate, in order to add a mini entrance which did not exist before. The space under the stairs is not wasted, but converted into a cellar, very useful, when the m2 are counted. If the intentions of the interior designer and designer were determined in the distribution of volumes, they were just as much in the care given to details and finishes. The rounded edges of the radiators echo those of the load-bearing wall, while the cupboards in the kitchen (Mobalpa) offer impeccable storage solutions, adjusted to the full height. As for the floors, the porcelain stoneware tiling – Puzzle model (Mutina) by designers Barber and Osgerby – dialogues with the solid parquet with straight blades (New Parqueterie).
And its random geometric layout draws a path in the apartment, whose spaces, even open, gain in legibility, without disturbing the perspectives. A few designer pieces blend discreetly with family furniture. An assumed choice, for this young space designer, who has a string of interior architecture projects, she, who was spotted at Paris Design Week 2018, for her Dune armchair, the subject of her diploma, (to be found in Intramuros n° 198).
Anne Swynghedauw
