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IN THE CENTER of Paris, in the First Arrondissement, around the corner from the Jardin du Palais-Royal, with its orderly tree-lined walks, there is a ramshackle bistro called Juveniles, where tourists jostle for tables and locals shop bottles of wine to take away. home after work. It’s a true neighborhood place in an office-dominated district where most Parisians could never imagine living, even if they wanted to: nearby are the Louvre, the Opera Garnier, the Sainte-Chapelle and other places so intrinsic to the grand vision cinema of the city. that the relatively few apartments left available around here will be snatched up almost immediately.
But two floors above the restaurant, on Rue de Richelieu, is the small, austere home of Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay, both 37, owners of an interiors company called celebrate. Together they specialize in creating attractive and historically sensitive (but slightly subversive) hotels (among other projects) such as the Château Voltaire, a few blocks away, with its sober interiors within three adjacent buildings that, although dating from the 16th, 17th centuries and XVIII. , have come together perfectly.
After deciding to have a child, the couple bought this 1,075-square-foot apartment in one of Paris’ oldest and most classic neighborhoods during the pandemic, not because of their interest in the city’s past but in spite of it: “It was kind “It’s like a blank page,” says de Tonnac, noting that the base of the seven-story building dates to the 17th century and the façade above it was rebuilt in the early 20th century. “Nothing was symmetrical, it was very strange. But we liked the idea that it was not another Haussmannian building.” When they first visited the place, which had last been renovated in the 1990s, they knew they would have to redo everything and ended up removing all the hallways and reconfiguring all the rooms.
“I don’t think he was really a good architect,” Sauzay says, pouring coffee on a cold December afternoon while sitting on the low, cream-colored wool sofa of his own design next to de Tonnac, the two casually interrupting each other and continuing their dialogue. Yeah. thoughts in that way that work and life colleagues usually do. They had never set out to live on the First, and yet here was a space that would allow them to fully evoke their vision of what Parisian design should be from the nexus where it all began: Paris “is not Berlin,” says Sauzay, “ but since Covid-19 and Brexit, okay, I wouldn’t say it’s more fun, but there is more energy.” De Tonnac chimes in: “A few years ago the city was a bit boring,” he says. “Now it’s getting better.”
Both grew up in small towns in rural France, where as teenagers they were sought out to become models. He lasted longer in the industry than she did, although they both ended up studying interior design at the École Camondo in Paris, dated in their final year and decided shortly after, in 2011, to establish her agency. Sauzay originally hoped to create furniture; De Tonnac was drawn to design, she says, to determine the reason why she “felt good in some places and couldn’t say why: places with a special atmosphere: it could be a palace or a café.” For their first hospitality project, Le Pigalle, opened in 2015 inside a former 19th-century house, they learned how they could modify the acoustics or lighting to encourage people to speak more softly or adjust lobby seating to make them more relaxed. in their chairs. . Years later, it’s still one of the neighborhood’s most reliable destinations for morning meetings: “You don’t want the interior design to change every 10 years; that’s not the point,” she says of Tonnac. “We like these kinds of low-key, old-school hotels, so we tried to do something timeless, not too ‘trendy’.”
FOR THEIR HOTELS, whether Les Roches Rouges, a renovated resort on the Côte d’Azur originally built in the 1950s, or one they are currently finishing inside a 17th-century convent in Nice, they and their 15 employees often start with extensive architectural research. , sometimes finding buried parts of buildings that they could unearth, maintain or modernize. In their own home, however, they decided that the only thing worth salvaging were the long original 18th-century oak floorboards, on which they polished wax – “the old fashioned way,” explains de Tonnac – to create a wealth that swallows, rather than reflects, the afternoon light.
Neither of them like open-plan layouts, so they divided the apartment into different rooms: a large, square kitchen and dining room set up in the middle branch off on one side to a master suite and a den for their children. 2 years. eldest son and, on the other, a small living room and a library in the corner. With their hidden appliances and compact shelving, these communal spaces all feel a bit like ships, partly because of a framed nautical painting and a few reclaimed seashells displayed here and there, but especially because the kitchen is paneled in heavy oak, much of it sourced (and waxed) by a traditional artisan from central France with whom they often collaborate. “We always dream of a wooden room somewhere,” says Sauzay; They were particularly inspired by the work of early 20th-century French architect Auguste Perret, who used materials such as wood panels and reinforced concrete to create rooms that seemed rigorous yet poetic. Even the ceilings, which the couple raised to their original height of 13 feet, are covered in oak: When friends come over, “they ask, ‘Why did you put in a parquet floor?’ there?’” says Sauzay.
Once they moved in, they had to get rid of most of the brown furniture from their last rental in the Marais (they would have been too monochromatic against the wood) and decided to incorporate only a few new pieces of their own design (a ceiling lamp). . , the sofa) with antiques from the 20th century, such as chairs by Paolo Buffa and a dining table by Jules Leleu. “We like emptiness, so there’s not a lot of decoration,” Sauzay says. “It’s almost undone.” Still, his brand of minimalism has a certain inherent warmth, mainly due to the grain of the various woods, the feel of the few pale fabrics, and the way each surface seems to absorb and capture light in a city famous for being dark. (After all, this was where the first electric streetlights were installed.) In fact, Sauzay is so nervous about the unpleasant glow of LED bulbs, now standard in France and elsewhere, that he blacks out each one with special paint. or sometimes layers of vellum and masking tape, until they imitate the glow of incandescents. There are no rugs in the apartment either, the better to reveal the shadows floating over the bare floor. “I don’t love rugs,” he says of Tonnac. “Let’s say I prefer wood.”
Photography assistant: Camille Padilla