Quiet Riot

By offsetting elegant restraint with strong notes of natural, artistic and design exuberance, architect Frederic Berthier’s Paris apartment combines architectural stillness with human energy to beautiful and refreshing effect

- ROBYN ALEXANDER

Step from the bustling Paris streets into Frederic Berthier’s apartment, and you have immediately been treated to a master class in contrast. Its elegantly proportioned, calm-inducing spaces are a world away from the intense energy of Le Marais, instantly transporting their occupants to a realm probably best described by the homeowner himself as a space of “luminous quiet”. And in this apartment, quietness is never boring – rather, it has a great deal to say. Here, the concept of stillness is skilfully separated from any suggestion of the bland or the boring.

The primary need for calm comes, of course, from the apartment’s location. “When the project is in a city like Paris,” says Frederic, “I like to make it a space where you feel protected from the outside world.” As a result, the homes he creates in his architectural practice, also based in the city, tend to be “very quiet places – in terms of sound and also of design – in which to recharge one’s batteries”.

This particular apartment is located in the bustling Marais – an area where Frederic and his partner, Emma Alves, had not really considered living prior to Frederic’s discovery of this property, which was “a total ruin” at the time. They previously lived in the sixth arrondissement, says Frederic, and were looking for an apartment in that area when he fortuitously discovered this one – and instantly developed “a crush” on it. Or rather, he adds, it was “a crush for what I could do with it. Very often, I buy an apartment because I’m ‘sad’ to see it in very bad condition and think it deserves much better!”