In his search for an apartment for his infant son, himself and all his books, Léonard stumbled almost by chance upon this microduplex on the top floor of a rather typical Parisian building, right in the heart of the 18th arrondissement. A bit off-kilter and with magnificent views and plenty of natural light, it featured a mezzanine accessible only via an awkwardly positioned ladder that required a certain appetite for risk, alongside two load-bearing beams and a micro-washroom. No matter: Léonard saw the potential to build a real apartment, with a proper real area, accessible by a real staircase. All he had to do was find the architects capable of turning his dream into reality. The dream? Something bright, fresh, minimalistic, and very functional. With one major constraint, in this small, completely open-plan volume: to create a small, secure bedroom for his child on the mezzanine, that would be isolated from the noise of the rest of the house.
A friend recommended Chayeb & Paradis (Sarah and Pauline, respectively.) It was like a daydream come true: “we treated the apartment as if it were actually 200 square meters,” the architects joke.