Charles Zana: Inside the Architect’s Own 18th Century Paris Apartment

There may be nothing ostentatious about Charles Zana’s work, and in reality, a sure sense of restraint dominates. For the previous 30 years, the AD100 architect has been creating interiors during which each element conveys magnificence, fluidity, and luxury. He applies an identical angle to his personal residence positioned within the coronary heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Paris neighborhood that’s been his favourite since his teen years. Zana set his coronary heart on this pure expression of a Louis XVI residence: “I like these aristocratic flats which have an actual historical past. What I additionally admire are the proportions of the rooms, the enfilades, the excessive ceilings, the big home windows, and the precision to the moldings and the cornices. This isn’t the bourgeois pomp of the nineteenth century; it was the 18th that was the good century with regards to laying the foundations of grand French decor.” 

Generally, areas which were modified can nonetheless give off the impression of getting been there endlessly, the operative concept being to subtly mix them into, whereas displaying nice respect for, an current setting. “I imagine many architects like residing in areas filled with historical past that precedes them and goes a bit of past them.” Right here, the choice was to go for a monochrome look with curtains and white partitions to perform a type of serenity. It’s a clean web page that invitations dashes of colour. “I discover that the very colourful Sottsass ceramics match fairly effectively on this atmosphere.” Rising up in a household of collectors, Zana inherited a robust penchant for classic design and for creating daring associations. A well-rounded aesthete, he is aware of the best way to inform the story behind objects and stage them inside an area.

Radical Italian design, and the maestros Ettore Sottsass, Carlo Scarpa, Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini, and Carlo Mollino, occupy delight of place on this Paris residence; positions which can be ever evolving because the architect likes to attempt new combos and push the road—with out ever letting the area really feel frozen. “I discover it fascinating to combine objects and inform a narrative. I’ve little want to lock myself into a mode or in an period. I launched my profession within the Eighties when the ‘complete look’ dominated. Immediately, although, I prefer to reside in areas which can be a mélange of the delicate and the bohemian.” 

To all of the classic objects, Zana provides numerous up to date artworks, in addition to a number of items of furnishings from his Ithaca assortment that he launched a bit of greater than a 12 months in the past, together with the big mattress posed diagonally throughout his bed room. Impressed by the swaddling shapes of Jean Royère’s Polar Bear chairs, it matches in completely with the oak paneling that was solely revealed by likelihood when the partitions have been stripped for repainting and their hidden previous emerged. It’s a previous that in the present day blends harmoniously with the current and breathes a light-weight, timeless ambiance into this ensemble of measured eclecticism.