Montmartre flat | Ilaria Di Carlo

The flat is located in the trendy Parisian area of Montmartre. The original layout had a nice bright living area and two generous bedrooms with en-suite but an open plan kitchen just in front of the main entrance and two small and dark bathrooms were somehow diminishing the space. The chosen solution for the re-styling of the entrance was to enclose the kitchen area into a three-dimensional carmine volume spilling inside the living room, catching the light of the big IX century windows through a corner opening, itself sealed by a ruby glass. The walls of the box were lacquered in order to have a nice smooth shining effect and at the bottom and top of the volume some shadow gaps would give the box a floating effect. The same ruby glass applied in the kitchen opening, was used in an existing niche in the living room to create some shelves, lighted up from above, to display collectables and small works of art. For the bathrooms a game of lights and mirrors was used to achieve the impression of bigger and brighter spaces, feeling that was also accentuated by the use of béton cirè, a technique that helps to give the impression of the dematerialization of the walls. The existing parquet in solid oak painted Bordeaux was shaved in order to get rid of the old darkening colour and then re-tinted in light grey to brighten up the space and match the colour palette chosen for the decoration of the flat.