At the height of aHopper painting
A penthouse with multiple intimacies. In a Hopper-style decor, an intervention bordering on architectural haute couture.
The cathedral, the Salève, the Jet d'eau as you stretch your gaze... from the terrace created ex nihilo on a classic Geneva sloping roof, the panoramic view of the horizon in a 360° sweep. About twenty meters long, sequenced with multiple plant boxes, it is a teak pontoon open to the four winds where, Captain Ahab of circumstance, one has the impression of cutting through the sea of the surrounding roofs. Unless it's a hanging garden... A rectangle of parties right up to the night-goer... A terrain conducive to a titanic flight...
Part of the surface is covered with a prefabricated pergola which fits the existing structure and protects the outdoor kitchen. The slats which cover it, removable and tiltable according to the orientation of the sun, are a beginning of the architectural gesture which is deployed on the lower floor, the extension of an intervention which has a continuation in the ideas.
A radiant apartment
Basically, it is a 213 m2 apartment built in an old attic whose program can accommodate a couple with a child. We say this because there are two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms. Practically, it is a game of architectural hide and seek where spaces evolve according to the desires of its user. To do this, the decision was to make the most of the available volumes while dealing with major existing constraints (the building's elevator, the pressurization systems, etc.).
custom-made alcoves
Around a central core concentrating the entrance staircase and the terminal system of the elevator shaft, the place distributes the spaces in the manner of a Siemens Mire. Apart from the living room and the dining room, the different rooms have all been created in custom-made deep alcoves. It is a loft in which each room offers a form of seclusion, which offers no straight view, thus reinforcing the feeling of introspection. The arrangement of the wooden slats has its own rhythm, from the tightest to the most spaced, like half-open curtains, for added lightness and dynamism. Once in the office, in the library, in the kitchen or the dressing room, “we are inside the interior”. Protected corners while no door closes the openings.
Apartment as if gutted as it seems revealed from everywhere, it is the image of the work carried out on the lights. Always indirect, revealing its facets in a discreet way. And if it lights up, above all it sets the mood.
A sculpture park
Empty, the apartment is designed like a sculpture park; the stairwell which contains within it the pulley of the elevator serving the building; the fireplace, added as a tasteful whim; the island which allows you to delimit the kitchen space while integrating it fully into the common space; the sideboard serving in particular to hide the TV screen.
The beams of the metal structure offer an industrial counterpoint to herringbone marquetry, or to slats installed at regular intervals acting as a natural skylight. In stained oak, these create privacy, direct natural light, but also its artificial cousin after dark. At the end of the day, the atmosphere is that of a Hopper painting, each space offering a constantly renewed experience.
An experience of light
Through this luminous bias, at the limit of artistic installation, at the confines of experimentation, we also think of the installations of the Dane Oliafur Eliasson, or those of the American Doug Wheeler. Yasmine Nicoucar: “I like this experimentation with space through different vectors, the one which allows us to stimulate all our senses. I want to ensure that the inhabitant, the visitor of these places keeps a memory of them in a corner of their memory. The floor is in one piece, living, made of crushed Swiss river stones, an assembly also made to measure by the Bernese company Weiss + Appetito.
Very rich in its functionalities, very noble in the materials used and the rendering obtained, it is an apartment that is sufficient in itself. That is to say, even naked, it doesn't take much to dress it. A few accessories to place here and there, because the architectural whole certainly does not deserve too busy decoration.
An inner adventure
One more detail. When you take the elevator, number 5 on the console no longer serves the desired floor. As if it had disappeared, hidden from view of the world. It's room 13 of a hotel, floor 7 and a half from the film As John Malkovich, the mirage oasis that exists only for the person who sees it. Or who lives there, in the specific case.
2016 / Client privé
Collaborator on this project : Xabier Calvo
Photographies © Dylan Perrenoud
Télécharger Espaces Contemporains 2018