Cool Spaces: Rive Droite Apartment by Sophie Dries Architect

WORDS Cheri Morris IMAGES Stephan Julliard

Sophie Dries Architect transforms a Haussman-style apartment into a contemplative refuge of fine art, featuring a dialogue between sculpture and texture, organic lines and minimalism.

Located on the Right Bank in Paris, the space speaks to its inhabitants – a fashion designer with a passion for ceramics and a researcher in man-machine collaboration. They sought a unique space from which to escape the Parisian hum, to live and work in, surrounded by their collection of contemporary art and design.

The very marked Haussmannian character of the reception rooms was retained, bringing to the other spaces an architectural interior centred around the cumulative interplay between sculpture and texture. Each of the spaces was conceived according to axes that create points of view on the couple’s collection of artwork and furniture, including works by Calder, Sol Lewitt, François Morellet, Vera Molnar, Kees Visser and Annette Messager.

The entrance is the opening and closing of each room, as well as a gallery. Here, an iconic piece of furniture from the 90s by Philippe Starck revisits the country straw chair. The bright living room houses several pieces of furniture by Dutch designer Valentin Loellmann and metal lighting by Olivier Abry, both specially commissioned for the space.

Contemporary design pieces by designers such as Gaetano Pesce contrast the 19th-century interior feel, while the fireplace in the workshop – inspired by the work of Diego Giacometti and Valentine Schelgel – creates a statement with hand-made plaster and impalpable shapes.

The kitchen’s credenza is in a patina brass, made to measure after being buried for weeks in the garden of an abbey. Evidence of soil, rain, animals and the environment have created a unique pattern, reminiscent of August Strindberg’s 1890 celestographs.

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