Imagine a blank page on which you have to create everything. This loft apartment was basically two raw floors. A former factory workshop in Pantin, it was bought by a developer who divided the building into bare floors. The buyers bought a duplicate. The two floors communicated with each other through a large hole (a hopper). The couple couldn’t see at all how to arrange these two levels, each of just over 60 m², which is why they called on an architect. They wanted two bedrooms, a bathroom, a beautiful living room, an office, a dining room and a kitchen. “As usual, a lot, a lot in a little space, that’s precisely our specialty”tells us Ophélie from Space Factory, in charge of the project. She confirms it to us, once again, with this incredible arrangement that she has created.
A renovation as colorful as the place
In a duplex, you enter on the ground floor where the living room is generally located. The first floor accommodates the sleeping area and possibly the office. There, Ophélie had the good idea to reverse everything. “We entered via the lowest floor. The level above was under the roof, but it was the one that benefited from the terrace and the light. There was a problem of consistency. The loft had to be reversed”says the architect. Another difficulty: the hopper took up a lot of space in the center of the room. Here again, Ophélie has discovered a trick: the opening has been reduced to the strict minimum and it is hidden behind the kitchen wall. The other originality was to dare to take rare choices on this type of surface. “When we imagine a loft, we imagine large, very flat surfaces, very neutral in the choice of colors. On the contrary, we wanted a very joyful, very colorful space. Take the opposite of this spirit while paying homage to it with raw materials like concrete in the staircase or polished concrete in the bathroom.” Everything has been well thought out on each floor. Every square centimeter is used to create bench corners and the color reinforces the brightness while bringing pep to the whole. Ready to discover this incredible project so aptly named by the architectural firm, the other side of the loft?
© Hervé Goluza
