In Paris, an Apartment With Views That Look Like Postcards

Unlike, say, Milan or New York, Paris isn’t a city that hides its beauty behind closed doors. Most of the French capital’s grand boulevards are, of course, lined with Haussmannian buildings, their stone facades and wrought-iron balconies as elegant as the herringbone parquet floors and marble fireplaces inside. Traditionally, because residents had to ascend these 19th-century buildings using narrow stairways, at least until the arrival of elevators, the second and third levels were the most desirable, with grander proportions and classical layouts. The sixth floor, known for its angular zinc roofline, was reserved for chambres de bonne (maid’s quarters), compact single rooms in which domestic staff once lived and which now might be rented to study-abroad students.

This century, however, young architects and decorators have begun to reimagine the typical Haussmann scheme — even in the wealthy Gros Caillou, a triangular neighborhood of quiet streets bordering the Seine in the Seventh arrondissement. It’s here that the designers Kim Haddou and Florent Dufourcq, 33 and 35, and partners in life and work, were asked two years ago to connect sections of the upper three floors ofa large, desirable limestone building to create a pied-à-terrefor a French family who lives overseas. The previous owner had acquired several empty chambres de bonne in recent decades; the new inhabitants wanted to combine those disparate rooms with two unrenovated apartments beneath them to create something calming and cohesive. Studio Haddou Dufourcq, which was established six years ago, had received the assignment after making a similar apartment nearby in their signature spare, textured-but-tranquil look for friends of the clients. This one, though, “has three levels, which is pretty uncommon in Paris,” Dufourcq says one March afternoon, sitting on a custom cream-cushioned sofa next to Haddou in the living room on the bottom floor. “The challenge was to make it feel like a house, where you don’t think about these crazy [room] layouts. It was a fun game to figure out.”

In order to unify the 2,150 square feet of “dark, dollhouse-like” spaces, as Haddou describes them, the duo had to move and reconstruct most of the walls, covering them in white plaster — some of which has an undulating ripple — that brightens the tawniness of the refinished oak floors, straw wallpaper and plush beige wall-to-wall carpet that the designers installed on new staircases and in some of the powder rooms. Since the home is usedforonly a few weeks a year by the family and their visiting guests, the owners “wanted it to feel like a hotel,” Haddou says, noting that there’s one bedroom and bathroom on each level. “If you don’t want to see anyone, you have your own floor.” The lowest one also includes a few common spaces — a sitting and dining area, a library and a galley kitchen (just for breakfast and coffee; no one cooks here) — while the middle floorhas a large, handsome office.

But it’s on the top level, given over to the primary suite, that the home, like any good game, offers up several surprises. In the designers’ early plans, the bedroom, owners’ office and dressing area, all in the same warm tones as the rest of the apartment, had been oriented toward the Eiffel Tower: Three west-facing windows offer uninterrupted views of the landmark rising above a handful of low rooftops. “It’s really close,” Dufourcq says. “This is the postcard of Paris everyone looks for.”