Since 2014, once we first met Gesa Hansen, we’ve been following her round, from her Younger Designer in Paris Digs to her Excessive-Fashion Rustic Home for Her Household of 5. Gesa, who’s Scandinavian and German and studied in Japan, runs her personal inside design agency and furnishings line, The Hansen Household, produced by her mother and father’ wooden workshop in Germany. She lately up to date us on her newest undertaking: the newly opened Café Compagnon in Paris’s Sentier neighborhood within the 2ème, which she designed for her restaurateur husband, Charles Compagnon.
The morning-to-night cafe-bar-bistro got here to be at a fragile time, and Charles’s request was that Gesa create a gathering area with a “gentle, calm, protecting feeling.” She took that directive and ran with it, orchestrating a three-seating-area eating room that’s each rigorously deliberate and stuffed with private touches. “The concept was to create an homage to Charle’s late grandfather, sculptor Carlos Ferreira de la Torre,” Gesa tells us. And likewise to infuse it with a house away from dwelling feeling: “in Paris, the flats are sometimes so small that your favourite restaurant turns into your front room the place you additionally work, and the place you’ve got all of your lunches and dinners. That’s why I put sockets in every single place.” Be part of us for a take a look at a dozen particulars value noting—and borrowing when creating your personal place to linger.
Images by Nathalie Mohadjer, courtesy of Gesa Hansen.
1. Make an entrance.
Above: Cafe Compagnon is positioned on a quiet avenue near the Palais Royal and the Louvre. Gesa utilized rosy and ruddy shades all through beginning with the bistro chairs and the beckoning checkered entry curtain. For bistro chairs sources, see 10 Simple Items. Above: The curtain on the entry provides “two necessary components,” says Gesa, “heat—each literal and visible—and a contact of theater.” Gesa is designing a furnishings assortment for Pierre Frey and used the corporate’s textiles all through, together with the checked curtain and Pampelune, the chenille velvet, on the banquettes.
2. Animate your rooms with artwork…
Above: Café Compagnon is Charles’s third Paris restaurant—he additionally owns Le Richer and 52 Faubourg Saint Denis. Gesa celebrated his grandfather’s giant steel sculptures by “turning them into two-dimensional wood sculptures, like Corbusier did: I needed to discover a straightforward model that works on a wall.” Gesa sketched the designs and had their contractor fabricate them.
3. …and dynamic furnishings, too.
Above: “I like utilizing wooden in ways in which make it look softer, nearly like a textile,” says Gesa. “It’s good to the touch.” Her twisted oak tables have been made for the restaurant by The Hansen Household, which affords a number of of Gesa’s designs, from cabinets to a Skagerak Bench, with rope-style helps.
4. Foxed mirrors = flattering.
Above: You would possibly suppose that weathered mirrors are onerous to come back by, particularly in giant panels. Not so, says Gesa: “you’ll be able to get them organized with this previous look in any mirror atelier. I all the time use them as a result of they make everybody look good.”
5. Why cease at one?
Above: The ceiling is stuffed with a constellation of lights (the Etna design in copper by Mawa). “They’re on two dimmers, so we are able to flip them on in a chaotic method, like stars.”
6. Body your view.
Above: Enclosures add order and cohesion, which is why Gesa, makes use of them in every single place: “I like to border partitions from high to toe with wooden, it makes them really feel instantly extra calm. I body all the things in wooden, even the wall lights.” These oak particulars within the restaurant’s again room work effectively with the Fifties Henning Kjaernulf oak Razor chairs—Gesa purchased them from HDC Antiquités at Paris’s Marché aux Puces de Saint Ouen.
7. Go a bit delicate.
Above: Contrasting textured surfaces make the area extra attention-grabbing and comfy: Gesa paired Pierre Frey’s Baltazar Ocre, a easy gold velvet, with the aforementioned Pampelune chenille velvet: “I used the flawed aspect as a result of it’s extra tough.” The linen wallpaper is Pierre Frey’s Assouan.
8. Make an announcement with stone.
Above: “I favor to make use of coloured stones as colours as a substitute of portray a wall, says Gesa explaining her selection of Rojo Alicante, “one of many cheaper marbles” on the wall with a view into the kitchen. Set off by white surfaces, the assorted reds co-exist harmoniously.
9. Crenelation isn’t only for castles.
Above: Impressed by Brancusi sculptures, Gesa topped the banquettes with zigzag edging:”I needed to make them seem like a brutalist sculptural centerpiece.” Above: Gesa completed the bar in wood demilunes: “for bar fronts and kitchen islands, I believe it’s all the time nicer to have a texture than a flat floor. Right here, I once more selected a texture that makes the wooden look delicate.” As for water resistance, she says: “If it’s oiled, there’s no drawback—my kitchen is in huge wooden.”
Among the wines on supply are from Charle’s personal winery in Beaujolais. And to verify his institutions serve memorably nice espresso, Charles spends hours roasting natural beans in a roaster he put in in an previous barn at their household dwelling in Courances, south of Paris.
10. The on a regular basis may be eye-opening.
Above: The hallway to the bogs is lined in what Gesa describes as “typical facade bricks used on a whole lot of homes within the fifteenth”—they’re by Rairies in a coloration known as Montlouis.” Along with being reasonably priced and contributing texture and coloration, they’re extraordinarily sturdy, a plus, Gesa notes, for hallways the place partitions get typically broken.
11. Wine works in a small toilet.
Above: The bogs shift to dramatic shiny tiles in a claret crimson from fifth-generation workshop Céramiques du Beaujolais. The Bordeaux-colored sink is the surface-mounted Artis basin that Gesa designed for Villeroy & Boch. The Braided Laundry Basket is from Ferm Residing.
12. Handmade particulars are welcoming.
Above: We are able to all profit from some softness nowadays. To lend the institution the requested protecting feeling, Gesa hung linen curtains that she had her brodeuse buddy Audrey Demarre embroider with “tiny icons of espresso making.”
Cafe Compagnon is at 22-26 rue Léopold Bellan in Paris’s 2nd arrondissement.
