Credit: architecturaldigest.com
“We didn’t want to keep anything from the existing little house, which had been completely cobbled together over the years by its previous owner,” Antoine Geiger and August Hijlkema, founding architects of Geiger & Hijlkema, say. It’s true: The new variety of spaces make the home’s 646 square feet seem twice as big. “We cleaned up the whole thing, right down to the staircases. Everything was reworked. We tried to think of the home as a place where time stands still. You enter this cul-de-sac, then push open a gate, and you find yourself in this marvelous garden. Suddenly Paris feels far away.” With a certain modesty to its form, but with a great richness in terms of the various volumes and the way that they are arranged, the pair created a succession of small spaces that compress and expand, where you cross light and half-light and you wind your way up three levels with two terraces and ceilings of various heights.
A good place to start with this home tour is the large picture window that brings the garden indoors. The entrance and principal bedroom on the first floor take advantage of the calm of the courtyard, with the latter an intimate suite that feels like a bamboo box complemented by a bathroom with black Zellige tiles and a green onyx sink. The sink, which was made from scrap stone salvaged from a marble workshop, added a luxurious touch while staying within the tight budget. The centerpiece of the house is the staircase, a sculptural feature that widens slightly as it ascends, and whose second flight of steps features treads of galvanized steel gratings to let in light. On the first level, the living area opens onto a large stone terrace overlooking the garden, which has a railing covered in Virginia creeper.
A mineral-green terrazzo floor creates the impression of the home being grounded in its location, while a mesh of solid oak slats gives rhythm to the space, introducing warmth and character. “If we start with light, simple, and luminous walls, the floors can be a means of introducing materiality and a real personality to the home.” The kitchen, at the top of the first staircase, leads to the dining room, which then opens onto the cathedral-ceiling living room in this sequence of interconnected spaces. Here, we understand the architects’ intention a repetition of the idea of compression and expansion in the home’s sequence of volumes. “The height of the ceiling, which is low in the kitchen, rises in the dining room and then becomes full height in the living room, allowing us to fit three different functions into a 237-square-foot space.”
