51 rue Raynouard is an apartment block in the16th arrondissement in Paris, designed and built in 1932 by Auguste Perret. Perret is a seminal architect of the 20th century, responsible for heading the re-build of Le Havre post–Second World War (now a World Heritage Site), and for his pioneering use of reinforced concrete. He constructed no. 51 to house his design firm and his family, in an apartment on the top floor. His concern was not so much how his building looked from the ground, but rather how the world outside would appear from his building. Perret wrote that the apartment ‘is filled with sunlight from dawn to dusk’. Now a listed building, architectural interventions are restricted and the architect owner has refused to make even minor repairs. But he has certainly filled it with pretty things…
The walls throughout are lined with French oak panelling in the most beautiful pale honey colour, floors are narrow timber boards of a similar hue and columns are made from stone-blasted concrete, not the marble one would expect of the era.
The furniture is a master-class of design classics. In the dining room, black marble-topped Eero Saarinen table and Eames wire chairs. I spy an AJ floor lamp by Arne Jacobsen and Flos desk lamp. Red Utrecht armchairs by Gerrit Rietveld and his Zig Zag chair sit alongside more modern pieces – Low Pad chairs by Jasper Morrison and a Still coffee table which echoes the circular plaster feature ceiling above. A beautiful, circular stone basin sits within the turquoise-green bathroom.
Modern High Design Pied-à-Terre Paris, via Dwell, here, and ‘One hundred houses for one hundred European Architects’ by Gennaro Postiglione.
Photographs: Hotze Eisma.
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