THE NEW YORK TIMES Style Magazine ran a great piece recently on the Parisian designer and architect Joseph Dirand, a favourite of ours here at This Is Glamorous. In it, he spoke of one of his dream projects, one where he there were no creative or budgetary constraints, or any constraints at all for that matter. A project where he was completely free to realise his fantasme with the client’s blessing, who told him “I want you to achieve your dream; that would be my dream”.
This client was an heiress to an Eastern European fortune, and the space was two combined apartments in an early 19th-century Haussmannian building on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
Dirand’s dream includes his signature extravagant expanses of rare marble, pieces of artwork that he has long desired to own (such as the On Kawara date painting that hangs above a suede-covered desk); sofas, chairs, desks and tables enveloped in cashmere, mohair and silk, and everywhere, perfection. The architect knows that the finished project is not a reasonable one where one could live in its perfect rooms in an ordinary fashion, but if you’re ever wondering what happens when a client gives a designer carte blanche to create his dream, this it is …
Credits
Photography by Martin Morrell for the New York Times Style Magazine; Interior Design by Joseph Dirand
In the kitchen (below, left), Dirand designed a cantilevered table Breccia Viola marble that appears to float
Above, a bath carved from a single block of white Estremoz marble
