Located in the 9th arrondissement is an early 19th century apartment MKCA is renovating into a home for an American couple and their grown children to use as a home base in Paris. The corner apartment occupies the entire floor and contains an outer enfilade of primary spaces and a dark interior service corridor that wraps the interior building stair.

Architecturally the aim of the project is to reclaim the former service spaces and to create a new kitchen and connecting space that create more effortless connections allowing movement throughout the apartment. Two radically different qualities of light: the outer – warm, reflected light from the street and surrounding buildings, and the inner – cool, filtered through leaded and colored stained glass and the building courtyard inform both the spaces and their material and coloration with a language of historic preservation and plaster ornament along the outer ring of spaces, and a smooth, curved plaster interior lining the inner ring.

Outer and inner spaces meet along an articulated interior surface that is punctuated with round niches and a new glass partition that admits filtered daylight into the inner zone, and that glows like a lantern in the evening. Newly created ensuite bathrooms and powder room are expressive and a riot of pattern, color, and figure, all rendered in north African Zellige tile.

In progress