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Florquin Studio turned a deteriorated two-room apartment in Paris’s Montorgueil neighborhood into a compact, Mediterranean-inspired home by making storage part of the architecture. Instead of rebuilding separate rooms, the renovation opens the plan, raises the bed onto a storage platform, hides appliances in the entrance, and gives almost every major furnishing a second job.
The result, documented by Architectural Digest on June 17, 2025, is less a collection of space-saving products than a coordinated set of custom decisions for an owner who lives there for part of the year and hosts his child in summer.
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The apartment originally had two rooms, but Florquin Studio removed that division to create a brighter open plan. The renovation does not treat the sleeping area as a conventional bedroom hidden behind a new wall. Instead, a raised platform establishes a clear bedroom zone inside the larger living space.
That distinction matters in a very small home. A full partition would consume floor area, interrupt the flow of daylight, and create another surface that needs a door or passage. The platform defines where the bed belongs while leaving the rest of the plan visually connected. It also converts the volume below the mattress into useful storage rather than leaving it as inaccessible void.
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A raised bed with storage below
The king-size bed sits on a custom-built platform. Storage is concealed underneath, so clothing, linens, luggage, or other infrequently displayed items can be kept close to the sleeping area without adding freestanding cabinets. The feature does not identify the compartments’ dimensions or hardware, so the important idea is the integration: the bed base, storage, and room divider are one piece of joinery.
Steps on both sides of the platform provide access. They also create small perches where someone can sit, chat, or read. Joshua Florquin, founder of Florquin Studio, described the intention this way: “We concealed storage space underneath it to maximize space and functionality while maintaining a clean and elegant look, with little nooks where you can sit, chat, or read a book on the steps.”
Those steps prevent the platform from behaving like a bulky plinth dropped into the room. They make the change in level usable from more than one direction and give the sleeping zone a social edge rather than making it an isolated object.
A second sleeping place without a guest room
A sofa of about 6.5 feet converts into a bed for the owner’s child. During the day it works as the sitting-room sofa; at night it supplies a separate sleeping surface without requiring a permanently enclosed guest room.
This is a particularly direct response to the owner’s pattern of use. The apartment is not described as a full-time family home, so dedicating an entire room to occasional guests would waste scarce floor area for much of the year. The convertible sofa keeps the common area active daily and changes function only when a visitor arrives.
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Hide the utility functions at the entrance
The entrance performs more work than a typical hallway. The washing machine and refrigerator are concealed behind handle-free, light-oak panels, keeping visually prominent appliances out of sight as soon as the door opens. The panels make the equipment read as cabinetry rather than as a line of unrelated machines.
The kitchen is arranged as an entrance zone paired with a galley-style run in the living room. That two-part arrangement lets the apartment retain cooking capacity without turning the first sightline into a wall of appliances. It also shows why storage planning cannot be separated from circulation: the cabinetry is doing visual, organizational, and infrastructural work at the threshold.
Why handle-free fronts matter here
The project’s handle-free doors create a continuous light-oak surface. In a larger kitchen, projecting handles can be a minor detail; in a narrow entrance, they add visual interruptions and can catch clothing or bags. The design does not claim that handle-free hardware solves every small-kitchen problem, but in this apartment it supports the goal of making utility storage recede into the background.
Distribute storage through the furniture
Storage is not concentrated in one oversized closet. A wall-mounted bench includes room for books and a stereo, combining seating with display and equipment storage. Because the bench is lifted from the floor, the wall remains visually lighter than a deep freestanding cabinet would be, while the seat gives the living area another place to pause.
A custom travertine table serves both dining and work. The apartment therefore does not need separate dining and office desks competing for the same floor area. The table’s material also connects it to the warm, mineral palette used elsewhere, so a practical workstation does not look like an afterthought.
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Taken together, the platform, entry cabinetry, bench, and table create a distributed storage system. Each zone stores the things most likely to be used there: bedroom items under the bed, appliances at the entrance, books and audio equipment in the bench, and daily work or meals at the table. That reduces the need to cross the apartment simply to retrieve routine items.
Use a restrained palette to unify the open plan
The apartment’s Mediterranean character comes from the combination of materials and colors rather than from a decorative theme applied to one room. The feature describes sandy and earthy tones, light oak, travertine, beige lime-painted walls, linoleum flooring, terracotta, and green waxed concrete.
Project details identify Mercadier lime paint and waxed concrete, Gerflor linoleum, Raujolles terracotta, and a green sink by The French Vikings. These are reported specifications for this renovation, not evidence that any one product will produce the same result in another apartment. The visual effect depends on how the materials are composed across the whole plan.
Light oak as the connective material
Light oak appears on the entrance panels and in the apartment’s built-in language. Its pale tone relates to the beige walls and sandy surfaces without introducing a strong contrast at the doorway. Because the storage fronts are flush and handle-free, the wood reads as a calm plane that helps the small home feel continuous from entry to living area.
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Mineral surfaces with controlled color
Travertine, terracotta, lime paint, and waxed concrete give the rooms varied texture while staying within an earthy range. The bathroom is the strongest color departure: green waxed-concrete walls and terracotta flooring create a more saturated, enclosed environment. That contrast gives the bathroom its own identity without requiring a separate decorative scheme in the living space.
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Daylight as part of the composition
The apartment is southeast-facing, has double exposure, and contains four windows, according to the Architectural Digest tour. Those are characteristics of this specific home, not a general promise that southeast orientation or a particular window count guarantees good light. In the project, however, the open plan allows daylight to travel farther than it could through the former two-room arrangement.
The bathroom makes a small room feel intentional
The bathroom combines green waxed-concrete walls with terracotta flooring. Custom shelves provide places for plants, so the greenery is built into the room rather than added as loose accessories that would consume limited counter space.
An oak door with fluted glass allows light to pass from the bathroom toward the entrance. The glass preserves a degree of separation while avoiding an opaque block at the end of the entry sequence. It is another example of the renovation balancing privacy and openness instead of choosing one at the expense of the other.
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Zones are defined without multiplying rooms
The platform marks the sleeping area, the sofa identifies the sitting area, and the galley run establishes the kitchen. None of those functions needs a full-height partition. The plan therefore gains recognizable zones without recreating the circulation problems of the original two-room layout.
Every large element earns more than one job
The bed platform is a bed base, storage volume, access stair, and seating nook. The sofa is daytime seating and a child’s bed. The bench stores books and a stereo while providing a seat. The table is a dining surface and a workstation. This is not merely a list of convertible products; it is a rule for deciding what deserves floor area.
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Closed storage protects the calm visual field
Appliances disappear behind oak panels, and bed storage is concealed below the platform. The apartment still contains the equipment required for daily life, but fewer of those objects dominate the room at once. In a compact open plan, that visual discipline is as important to the design as the number of shelves.
Custom work follows the actual footprint
The tour describes a bespoke renovation rather than an off-the-shelf kit. Built-ins can follow the apartment’s corners, window positions, ceiling heights, and circulation paths; standard furniture usually cannot. That does not make custom construction automatically better, but it explains why the platform, bench, entrance cabinets, and table operate as a coherent system.
How to adapt the ideas in another small apartment
The Paris project is a useful precedent, not a set of dimensions to copy. If you are planning a similar renovation, apply the logic in this order:
- Map fixed services first. Mark plumbing, ventilation, electrical points, windows, doors, and radiators before drawing furniture. The kitchen and bathroom can only move as far as those services and local regulations allow.
- Choose the main sleeping strategy. Decide whether a raised bed, a fold-down bed, or a convertible sofa fits your ceiling height, mobility needs, and daily routine. A platform is only worthwhile if its steps and storage remain comfortable to use.
- Test circulation at full scale. Mark the proposed bed, sofa, and cabinet footprints with tape or cardboard. Check the route from the entrance to the bathroom, kitchen, windows, and sleeping area before ordering joinery.
- Assign storage by frequency of use. Put daily items at reachable heights and reserve under-bed or high cabinets for seasonal or occasional belongings. Concealed storage should still have practical access; a hidden compartment that is difficult to open is not efficient storage.
- Give each major furnishing a second function. Look for combinations such as seat-plus-storage, desk-plus-dining table, or bed-base-plus-drawers. Do not force every object to transform if the mechanism makes it slow or uncomfortable to use.
- Keep the material palette coordinated. Select a small group of woods, mineral surfaces, flooring, and paint colors that can repeat across the plan. The Paris apartment uses warm oak, sandy walls, travertine, terracotta, and green bathroom surfaces; another home may need a different palette for its light and existing finishes.
- Plan lighting with the open layout. Use the window positions and sightlines to decide where opaque cabinets, mirrors, and glazed doors belong. Fluted glass can separate a room while still allowing borrowed light, as it does at the bathroom entrance in this project.
- Have custom elements checked professionally. A raised platform, electrical work, appliance ventilation, wet-area finishes, and built-in cabinetry should be reviewed by qualified local professionals. The Architectural Digest feature does not provide construction drawings, structural details, or costs.
What is custom—and what is not
The apartment should not be mistaken for a retail package. The raised bed and its integrated storage were custom-made for this renovation, and the feature does not name an off-the-shelf bed system that reproduces them. A commercially available storage-bed frame is an honest analogue for the general idea, but it will not automatically provide the same steps, seating niches, proportions, or relationship to the kitchen and windows.
The same caution applies to the cabinetry and travertine table. Their value lies in fitting this particular plan. Anyone seeking the look should compare the cost and disruption of custom joinery with modular pieces, while accepting that modular furniture may leave awkward gaps or sacrifice the integrated circulation that makes the Paris apartment work.
Project facts at a glance
| Item | Documented detail |
|---|---|
| Location | Montorgueil neighborhood, between Montorgueil and Bonne Nouvelle, Paris |
| Stated area | 291 square feet, as reported by Architectural Digest in 2025 |
| Original condition | A run-down two-room apartment |
| Sleeping arrangement | King-size bed on a raised storage platform; convertible sofa for the owner’s child |
| Convertible sofa length | About 6.5 feet, according to the 2025 feature |
| Daylight | Southeast-facing, double exposure, and four windows |
| Owner’s use | Planned residence for half the year, with the child visiting in summer |
| Design studio | Florquin Studio |
Why this renovation is a useful small-space precedent
The apartment succeeds because storage is treated as a spatial framework rather than an accessory added after the layout is finished. Opening the former rooms creates a shared field of light and movement; the raised platform restores a sense of bedroom territory without rebuilding a wall; and the concealed appliances keep the entrance from becoming a service corridor.
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Its most transferable lesson is not a particular color, sofa length, or bed height. It is the discipline of making each intervention answer several needs at once while preserving clear circulation. The materials and colors then reinforce that order, giving the compact home a coherent identity instead of a crowded collection of compromises.
Architectural Digest’s full tour is available at architecturaldigest.com. Florquin Studio’s press archive, which lists the feature and related June 2025 coverage, is at florquinstudio.com/press.
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