A Parisian interior reinterpreted

No major structural intervention was made. The floorplan was rebuilt in successive gestures, responding to the real life of its inhabitants. The former dining room was opened to become a corner kitchen flooded with light; the former kitchen was transformed into a discreet TV lounge paired with a laundry room. This almost silent logic of displacement made it possible to redefine functions without altering proportions.

Each room was given bespoke elements designed specifically for it: wardrobes, headboards, benches, bathroom fittings, and wooden panels with carefully selected grain. Nothing demonstrative—rather a work of balance and fine adjustment, where equilibrium is favoured over effect.

The master bedroom embodies this intent. It concentrates one of the project’s most significant gestures: bespoke staff and plasterwork. New cornices and rosettes were designed and crafted for the space; wall mouldings and sculpted motifs — including spandrels and stylised leaves — compose a plaster décor halfway between relief and textile. The room feels enveloped. Surfaces take on a slight haze, light clings to the volumes. Here, material speaks — it does not simply illustrate itself.

At the entrance, the dialogue between design and craftsmanship takes on another form. The master glassmakers of Au Passeur de Lumière created a series of stained-glass panels for the space, based on a Rinck motif originally designed for a textile collection published by Maison Thevenon. This frieze, inherited from the vocabulary of marquetry, finds a new interpretation in glass. Throughout the day, light passes through it, animating the space and immediately establishing the project’s DNA: a precise balance between heritage, design and savoir-faire.

Material serves as the common ground for every intervention: Carrara marble for the kitchen, Calacatta Oro for the master bathroom, artisanal mosaics, oak parquet, decorative glass, gold leaf, matte lacquers, and bespoke mirrors. Each surface contributes to shaping the light rather than to mere ornamentation.

After four weeks of stripping out, seven months of work were required to orchestrate the whole: general contractor, marble worker, ceramicist, electrician, joiner, glazier, plaster craftsman, parquet installer, gilder, upholsterer — a constellation of coordinated gestures, each in its place, each in service of the space.

François Premier is not a renovated apartment. It is a rewritten way of inhabiting: heritage brought to a contemporary scale, without ostentation. A Parisian interior that is soft, quiet, timeless — true to Rinck’s ethos, where architecture elevates material, structures light, and tells a story through restrained décors and a mastered ornamental language.