PARIS ORIGINAL

Celebrated design firm Studio KO transforms the idea of spare elegance with rich colour and quietly luxurious finishings in a Paris apartment

The aesthetic of design duo Studio KO is born of an intriguing paradox — what if you steep pared- down ideals in a brew of excess? For nearly 20 years, the Paris-based firm’s principals, Olivier Marty and Karl Fournier, have played with that dynamic, most notably for the holiday homes of Italian socialite Marella Agnelli and French industrialist Pierre Bergé in Morocco, which is hardly a locale that calls to mind the unadorned. They have created deceptively simple and serene environments amid the pattern-mad, colour-saturated traditional culture of North Africa. The pied-à-terre in Paris’s 8th arrondissement that they recently completed for a couple — one a financier and the other a fashion designer — may represent the apotheosis of their evolving approach. While full of the layered surface textures that are the studio’s trademark, it is more exuberant than much of their past work. “This took us further in some way than we had gone,” says Marty. “For years we stayed away from colour, but as we go on there is more and more confidence, and now we’re letting it back into our work.” At the beginning, there were challenges. The 167-square-metre, two-bedroom apartment is in a 19th- century building. This is a period that most French designers, including Marty and Fournier, generally do not care for — preferring the 17th and 18th centuries, with their Louis pedigree and simpler lines, or the Modernism of such 20th- century Gallic idols as Jean-Michel Frank and Jean Prouvé. But this apartment was among the finest of its era, with disciplined lines and none of the over-the-top revival touches. The designers, who are also partners in life, warmed to it quickly. They started by asking their clients if there was an object or talisman that epitomised the feeling they wanted to capture. The clients sent a photo of a daringly curvy leather-and-brass contemporary chair by British designer Mark Brazier-Jones. “It had all the flair we wanted,” says the fashion designer. “It was modern and beautiful and a little crazy.” ››

The living room walls in the Paris apartment by Studio KO were custom-crafted by the design duo with ‘ghost’ images of the original 19th-century boiserie panelling. They form the backdrop for a pair of Studio KO-designed Brutalist sconces, a vast blue velvet sofa and mid-century barrel chairs by Brazil Modernist Jorge Zalszupin.

ABOVE: The guest room features vintage sconces by Italy’s Barovier & Toso and an artwork, The Black President (2009), by contemporary Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai, set against walls and doors painted in Majorelle blue. OPPOSITE: In the dining area, a marble ‘Samo’ table by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa and Vittorio Bonacina rattan chairs sit beneath a vintage Venini pendant lamp. The vitrines, lined with tangerine velvet, house 19th-century Chinese ceramics.