There’s nothing ostentatious about Charles Zana’s work, and actually, a sure sense of restraint dominates. For the previous 30 years, the AD100 architect has been creating interiors during which each element conveys class, fluidity, and luxury. He applies an analogous perspective to his personal condo situated within the coronary heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Paris neighborhood that’s been his favourite since his teen years. Zana set his coronary heart on this pure expression of a Louis XVI condo: “I really like these aristocratic flats which have an actual historical past. What I additionally admire are the proportions of the rooms, the enfilades, the excessive ceilings, the massive home windows, and the precision to the moldings and the cornices. This isn’t the bourgeois pomp of the nineteenth century; it was the 18th that was the good century with regards to laying the foundations of grand French decor.”
Typically, areas which have been modified can nonetheless give off the impression of getting been there endlessly, the operative concept being to subtly mix them into, whereas displaying nice respect for, an current setting. “I imagine many architects like dwelling in areas stuffed with historical past that precedes them and goes slightly past them.” Right here, the choice was to go for a monochrome look with curtains and white partitions to perform a type of serenity. It’s a clean web page that invitations dashes of coloration. “I discover that the very colourful Sottsass ceramics match fairly properly on this atmosphere.” Rising up in a household of collectors, Zana inherited a robust penchant for classic design and for creating daring associations. A well-rounded aesthete, he is aware of the best way to inform the story behind objects and stage them inside an area.
Radical Italian design, and the maestros Ettore Sottsass, Carlo Scarpa, Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini, and Carlo Mollino, occupy satisfaction of place on this Paris condo; positions which can be ever evolving because the architect likes to attempt new combos and push the road—with out ever letting the house really feel frozen. “I discover it fascinating to combine objects and inform a narrative. I’ve little want to lock myself into a method or in an period. I launched my profession within the Eighties when the ‘whole look’ dominated. At the moment, although, I wish to dwell in areas which can be a mélange of the delicate and the bohemian.”
To all of the classic objects, Zana provides plenty of modern artworks, in addition to a number of items of furnishings from his Ithaca assortment that he launched slightly greater than a yr in the past, together with the massive mattress posed diagonally throughout his bed room. Impressed by the swaddling shapes of Jean Royère’s Polar Bear chairs, it matches in completely with the oak paneling that was solely revealed by probability when the partitions had been stripped for repainting and their hidden previous emerged. It’s a previous that right this moment blends harmoniously with the current and breathes a lightweight, timeless environment into this ensemble of measured eclecticism.
