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Octavian Popa’s 678-square-foot apartment in Paris shows how a small historic home can feel complete without being turned into a period museum. Set inside Castel Béranger, Hector Guimard’s 1898 Art Nouveau landmark, the apartment keeps its listed architectural fabric—stained glass, moldings, doors, handles, niches, cupboards, window frames, parquet and an original fireplace—while quietly updating the rooms that were not protected. The result is a preservation-minded refresh rather than a wholesale reconstruction.
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CM Studio Paris organized the renovation around one practical idea: let the architecture establish the character, then choose furniture, color and art at a compatible scale. Pale celadon, terra-cotta, midcentury Italian and Danish pieces, custom work and objects collected over time all coexist because the apartment has a consistent visual rhythm.
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Why Castel Béranger sets the rules
Castel Béranger stands in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. Architectural Digest describes it as the first Art Nouveau apartment building in France’s capital, completed by Hector Guimard in 1898. Guimard’s influence is not a decorative theme applied after the fact; it is embedded in the building’s doors, hardware, windows, elevator and ornamental lines.
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That distinction matters in a 678-square-foot home. In a newly built small apartment, a resident can replace finishes or move walls with relatively few historical consequences. Here, every intervention sits beside work that gives the building its identity. Popa and CM Studio Paris therefore treated the existing fabric as the primary design element and used new work to make it read more clearly.
An owner with a collector’s patience
Popa divides his time between Paris and Zurich and has a personal interest in interiors and collecting. His approach is gradual: the apartment is not filled with a single shopping trip or one period’s complete furniture set. Pieces found on travels, works by artists and carefully chosen vintage objects accumulate around the architecture.
That method avoids the common small-home problem of buying whatever fits first and then trying to make the room coherent. Each addition has to earn its footprint, relate to the surrounding materials and support the atmosphere already established by Castel Béranger.
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Popa describes the goal in the Architectural Digest tour: “We always kept in mind the goal of unifying and preserving the original look. Doors, ceilings, everything was freshened up. That’s what I wanted—not to change anything, just to enhance it.” The wording captures the project’s restraint. Surfaces were refreshed, but the apartment was not stripped back to create an imagined, all-new version of 1898.
What remained visible
The tour identifies the ceiling, doors and handles, stained-glass windows, moldings, niches, cupboards, windows and doorframes as listed or original features. The dining room retains narrow-strip parquet, and the apartment has an original Guimard fireplace. Even the building’s elevator belongs to the historical experience of arriving home; it is part of the architecture rather than a neutral service space.
Keeping these elements gives the rooms a strong baseline. The owner does not need to add abundant Art Nouveau accessories because the building already supplies pattern, craftsmanship and movement. Furniture can consequently be simpler, and art can be personal rather than period-matched.
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The floor decision that unified the plan
The bedroom’s wide-strip parquet was not protected. Instead of preserving a mismatch, CM Studio Paris replaced it with a copy of the narrower-strip parquet used in the dining room. The choice is easy to overlook, but it solves a visual problem across two adjoining rooms: the floor language now feels continuous even though one section is new.
This is a useful preservation principle for compact homes. When an original material is missing or unprotected, a carefully made copy can support the surviving material more effectively than a fashionable contrast. The copy does not pretend to be untouched history; it makes the historical rooms read as one composition.
Where the renovation was allowed to be contemporary
The kitchen and bathrooms were not protected, so they were redone. The intervention concentrates modern work where daily wear and technical requirements are highest, leaving the protected rooms to carry the period character. Monuments de France supervised restoration of the entrance, according to the tour caption, adding specialist oversight to the most public threshold of the apartment.
| Area or element | Condition or status described in the tour | Project response |
|---|---|---|
| Dining-room parquet | Original narrow-strip floor | Retained as the visual reference for the bedroom |
| Bedroom parquet | Wide-strip floor, not protected | Replaced with a copy of the dining-room narrow-strip parquet |
| Kitchen | Not protected | Redone for contemporary use |
| Bathrooms | Not protected | Redone for contemporary use |
| Entrance | Historic area requiring specialist care | Restoration supervised by Monuments de France |
| Doors, ceilings, stained glass, moldings, niches, cupboards and frames | Listed or original features identified in the tour | Freshened and preserved rather than replaced |
A palette that links rooms without flattening them
Celadon in the living and entrance areas
The living room and entrance use a pale celadon often called “Ladurée green.” The soft green sits comfortably with stained glass, dark wood and aged metal, but it is not a literal attempt to reproduce an 1898 color scheme. It acts as a calm field against which Guimard’s details and the owner’s furniture remain legible.
Using one related color through the entry and living area also helps a small plan feel larger. The eye moves from one space to the next without encountering a hard chromatic stop, while the architectural moldings still provide boundaries.
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The bedroom and bathroom shift to terra-cotta, described as “Marrakech red.” The warmer hue makes the private rooms feel distinct from the public circulation zone. Because the color appears in both bedroom and bathroom, it functions as a second thread through the plan rather than a single dramatic accent wall.
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Pattern used as a measured intervention
In the dining room, the lower walls carry Art Nouveau-inspired arabesques painted by decorative painter Barazandeh Dauzincourt. The pattern acknowledges the building’s language without covering every surface in ornament. Keeping the upper wall area quieter allows the ceiling, parquet and furniture to remain visible at the same time.
The bedroom uses a reissued Hector Guimard wallpaper design from L’Atelier Offard. The tour identifies the maker and the design lineage but gives no SKU, dimensions, price, current inventory or verified retail availability. It is therefore best understood as a specified design element in this apartment, not as a universally available product recommendation.
How the 678-square-foot layout makes room for five functions
Popa puts the plan plainly: “The apartment is small, but there’s still a living room, a dining room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and an entry.” The rooms are not described as oversized or transformed through major structural work. Their success comes from proportion, circulation and furniture that does more than one job.
A living room scaled to its envelope
The small living room contains a 1950s Italian bookcase with a built-in desk, a small Italian sofa and a pair of FD148 armchairs by Peter Hvidt and Olga Mølgaard Nielsen. The arrangement supplies storage, a work surface and several seats without relying on one large sectional or a deep cabinet wall.
The built-in desk is particularly efficient. It turns the bookcase into a piece of architecture-sized furniture: books and objects occupy the vertical volume, while the desk provides a place to work without requiring a separate office zone. In a compact apartment, that kind of dual use is more valuable than a nominally smaller piece that performs only one task.
Dining as a distinct room, not leftover circulation
The dining room keeps its narrow-strip parquet and receives Dauzincourt’s arabesques along the lower walls. A dining table designed by Casey Johnson and Sandra Weingort gives the room a clear purpose. The table is not treated as an emergency surface squeezed between other functions; it anchors a room that can support meals and display while remaining part of the apartment’s visual sequence.
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A bedroom with a quiet, custom footprint
The bedroom’s slim teak bed was custom made and inspired by Danish designs. Its narrow profile responds directly to the room’s dimensions, while the terra-cotta color and Guimard wallpaper provide richness without requiring bulky furnishings. Replacing the wide-strip floor with the dining-room pattern also prevents the bedroom from feeling like a later addition with unrelated materials.
The owner’s own explanation of scale
Popa says, “The layout is perfect for such a small space with every square inch used.” He also describes the guiding visual rule: “I love the simplicity of Scandinavian design, its clean shapes and elegance. In the apartment, everything works together, because there’s a consistent visual scale.” The statement explains why pieces from different decades do not compete. Their dimensions and visual weight are coordinated even when their origins are not.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Several periods can coexist when the objects are edited
The apartment brings Guimard-era architecture together with midcentury Italian and Danish furnishings. The living room’s 1950s Italian bookcase and sofa sit beside the FD148 chairs; a Maison Jansen coffee table adds another historical register. None of these pieces is presented as an original Castel Béranger commission. They are furnishings selected to live with the building, not props intended to recreate a complete period interior.
Historical artifacts, artworks and furnishings play different roles
The tour distinguishes among the building’s historic artifacts, the owner’s art and the decorative furniture. A Chinese table from the São Schlumberger collection is an object with its own provenance. Works by Raffaele Cioffi and Huguette Arthur Bertrand provide visual and intellectual focus. The sofa, chairs, bookcase, coffee table and bed solve everyday needs while contributing line, texture and proportion.
Keeping those categories distinct makes the home feel collected rather than staged. A painting does not have to imitate an Art Nouveau motif, and a chair does not have to be antique, because the architecture already supplies the historical anchor.
Collecting slowly protects the room’s identity
Popa gathers objects on his travels and looks for the right piece instead of filling every gap immediately. That slower process leaves visual breathing room around the furniture and allows new finds to be judged against the apartment’s scale. It also reduces the risk of turning a small home into a crowded display of unrelated souvenirs.
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What this apartment teaches about renovating a historic small home
Start with an inventory of what cannot be replaced
Before choosing paint or furniture, identify original floors, doors, hardware, windows, moldings, fireplaces, built-ins and other protected elements. Their condition and legal status determine where a project can be adventurous and where it must be conservative.
Use copies to repair visual continuity, not to manufacture history
The bedroom floor demonstrates a precise use of reproduction: the new narrow-strip parquet supports the original dining-room floor and unifies the plan. A copy is most convincing when it repairs a relationship between surviving elements, rather than when it is used to make every surface look artificially old.
Reserve contemporary changes for unprotected, high-use spaces
Redoing the kitchen and bathrooms allowed the apartment to meet present-day practical needs without sacrificing the rooms that define its historic character. This division can make a limited renovation budget more effective: spend conservation effort on irreplaceable fabric and direct modernization toward spaces where plumbing, ventilation and wear demand it.
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Measure furniture by circulation as well as by width
A piece can fit against a wall and still make a room unusable. The Italian bookcase with its integrated desk, the small sofa, paired armchairs and slim custom bed show how storage, work and seating can be combined while preserving pathways. Check door swings, routes to windows and the space needed to sit down before committing to any item.
Let one visual scale connect different eras
Scandinavian simplicity, Italian midcentury design, a Maison Jansen table, Guimard details and contemporary art can share a room when their height, mass and spacing are considered together. Matching every object to the building’s date would be less personal and could make the home feel like a set.
Choose color by sequence, not by isolated samples
Celadon carries the entrance into the living room; terra-cotta links bedroom and bathroom. Thinking in sequences helps a compact apartment feel intentional from the threshold onward. Pattern can then be concentrated—Dauzincourt’s lower-wall arabesques or the bedroom wallpaper—where it adds character without obscuring the architecture.
What is known about the project—and what is not
Architectural Digest’s home tour, written by Nicolas Milon, photographed by Lucas Soubigou-Marie and published November 12, 2024, is the basis for the apartment details above. The story first appeared in AD France and was translated by John Newton. It documents the rooms, named pieces, colors and renovation approach, but it does not provide independent architectural-history verification beyond the description of Castel Béranger, nor does it establish current maker inventories or retail prices.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11That limitation is important for anyone trying to reproduce the look. The L’Atelier Offard Guimard wallpaper is identified as a reissue, but its current dimensions, SKU, price and availability are not stated. The same caution applies to the vintage furniture and collection pieces: the tour names them, while sourcing, condition and cost remain specific to the owner’s acquisitions.
What the apartment does establish is a repeatable design logic. Preserve the details that carry the building’s identity, repair discontinuities with compatible materials, modernize rooms where the history permits it, and select fewer pieces at a scale the plan can support. In this Paris home, that logic makes 678 square feet feel layered rather than crowded.
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