In the mid-1920s, a young French interior designer, Jean-Michel Franck, moved into an 18th-century apartment in a narrow street on the Left Bank. He treated its refurbishment as the homes of his high society clients such as the Viscount and Viscountess de Noailles and the English writer Nancy Cunard, respecting the original architecture but sparing it the fuss. It was the Roaring Twenties—a decade of excess—but to Frank, Sparta was modern.
Frank had his workmen strip the paint off the Louis XVI style oak panels, leaving the wood pale and gritty. Together with his friend and later business partner, furniture maker Adolphe Chanot, he created a very austere decoration that could rival that of a monastery. The main palette is the lightest of neutrals, from white marble with taupe stripes in the bathroom to the leather sofas and even the sheets Franck tossed onto Louis XIV’s dining table. He left the parquet of Versailles bare, art and libertines were banned. His home was so abandoned when Jean Cocteau visited that he reportedly joked, “Charming young man, it’s a pity he got robbed.”
Frank left the apartment and moved to Buenos Aires in 1940, but unfortunately, during a trip to New York in 1941, he suffered from depression and committed suicide. The iconic duplex has since changed hands and been remodeled several times, including by minimalist Jacques Garcia, with most of Frank’s imprint erased.
But not all, as Parisian designer Pierre Yovanovitch discovered during a recent renovation of a French home. The raw oak paneling and bookcases were retained, as was the lobby’s pale pink marble. For Yovanovitch, it was enough to satisfy the client’s desire to bring back the atmosphere of the house “to Jean-Michel Franck – something more modern,” he said.
This task is very complex and represents a huge challenge. “I needed to find the essence of Franck’s work and bring it to life,” said Yovanovitch, who advised the esteemed Jean-Michel Franck Committee during the project. “Posing as someone else is not my interest. Otherwise, we would be frozen in time. We have to respect history, but also evolve – that’s where the fun is. Create an apartment that isn’t overly embellished or exaggerated. Something simple and complex. Thing”. Jean-Michel Franck’s apartment, but in the 21st century.
Yovanovitch began by redesigning the 2,500-square-foot duplex. He left the two main salons as they were, but changed much of the rest. He moved the kitchen from a far corner to a more central location – as was the case in the old large Parisian apartments, “because the family had staff,” he explained – to a more central location, and added a kitchen with a breakfast bar. island platform. “Now very happy,” he commented. “It really is a family room.” He converted the former kitchen into a guest bathroom and powder room, and the dining room into a guest room.
“I often work on houses from the 17th and 18th centuries, but I believe that they must have lived in our time,” says Yovanovitch. “The kitchen is more important these days. The family room is more important. Women have more clothes than before, so they need bigger wardrobes. We are more materialistic and accumulate more things. It forces us to approach decor in a different way.”
In creating flow, Jovanovic played with the apartment’s unusual design features, such as a small round tower where he placed his wife’s home office with a crescent-shaped desk, and a windowless staircase to the second floor, for which he commissioned a delightful fresco reminiscent of windows and mouldings. , and a 650-square-foot terrace—a rarity in Paris—which he connects to the living and dining room, allowing, as he puts it, “in and out.” “
Post time: May-23-2023