A Belle Epoque apartment in Baron Empain's Heliopolis, kept intact and furnished for this century.
Korba is the oldest address the studio works in — arcaded streets laid out in the first years of the last century, apartments with ceilings tall enough to hold a cornice and a plaster rose without crowding them. The temptation in a flat like this is to strip it and start again. We did the opposite. The plasterwork, the proportions and the window openings were kept exactly as they were found, and everything new was drawn to sit beneath them without argument.
The reception runs the full depth of the apartment, from the street windows to the dining end, so the original enfilade is still readable as one space. A single wall of walnut carries the television, the storage and the books, and stops short of the cornice so the ceiling reads continuously above it. Everything else is soft and low: curved boucle seating, a marble plinth at knee height, rugs that end well before the skirting. The old room is the architecture. The new work is furniture.
The old room is the architecture. The new work is furniture.
Dark walnut herringbone parquet, walnut panelling and joinery, black marble shelving, Arabescato marble plinths and mantel, ivory boucle upholstery, sage velvet, restored plaster cornices and ceiling roses. One red mesh chandelier in the reception and a draped copper chain fitting in the formal room — the only two loud objects in the apartment, and both hung where the ceiling can carry them.
A century-old apartment does not need to be modernised. It needs to be left alone, and then lived in properly.
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