There are many remarkable things in this Parisian pied-à-terre—a Jean Royère cocktail table, a pair of Diego Giacometti bronze Pommeaux de Canne armchairs, lighting by Paavo Tynell and Max Ingrand, a Carlo Scarpa dining table, and stellar artworks by the likes of Andy Warhol, John Baldessari, and Max Ernst, including an iron-and-wood sculpture by the last enigmatically entitled A Microbe Seen Through a Temperament.
But if there is one thing the project’s interior designer Luis Laplace covets more than anything, it is the book collection of his American-based investor client. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Laplace. “There are tomes signed by famous artists, limited editions, and old catalogues raisonnés. During the installation, I spent hours browsing through them.”
That the homeowner has a passion for art is hardly surprising. Almost all of Laplace’s clients do. The designer runs his Right Bank–based AD100 firm in tandem with his partner, Christophe Comoy, and since 2013 has completed countless projects for art-world powerhouses like dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth and photographer Cindy Sherman, to name just a few. Don’t, however, expect him to give you any concrete tips on how to display art in an interior. “It’s not a rational process,” he insists. “I let myself be guided by intuition.”
This 5,270-square-foot unit stretches over two floors of a typical Haussmannian building and occupies what were previously two separate apartments. Propitiously, they both came on the market around the same time. They also had the added advantages of looking out directly onto one of Paris’s most prized parks and of having a location with particular sentimental value to the homeowner. He was brought up in a flat just a few doors away. “It’s a lucky occurrence,” he says. “For me, it’s one of the more magical streets in Paris.”