Even within a small residence, designed for a small family, an interior can be required to fill diverse needs. For the Sacha apartment in Paris’s 15th Arrondissement, architect Alex Delaunay, founder of Sabo Project, has crafted a space that is tailor-made not only for a couple and their young daughter, but also for the family’s cat, from whom the project takes its name.
A previous renovation of this divided duplex had seen two identical units joined by a spiralling stair, but no effort to make the larger space feel like a single home had been made. The two floors each featured a bathroom, kitchen, and the doubling up of these spaces wasted valuable square footage in a modest 1,658-square-foot floor plan.
As another apartment is located above his clients’ stacked levels, Delaunay chose to dedicate the lowest floor to the bedrooms, ensuring that the family, particularly their daughter, would be protected from any noise that may filter down at night and disturb sleep.
The extra kitchen was stripped away, clearing the way for a home office, master bath and three spacious bedrooms. The architect wrapped the staircase that joins this sanctuary with the main living spaces in a pale wood, which serves as the dominant material that unifies the entire project.
Baltic birch plywood is used as cabinet and drawer fronts throughout the storage-filled home. It’s also employed to craft a combined closet and headboard in the bedroom and as wall paneling in the dining room. The material is further utilized to shape built-in bookcases, and drilled with dowel-size holes, it accommodates reconfigurable floating shelves upstairs and down.
The upper floor’s sweeping views spurred Delaunay to maintain an open space, but the staircase presented a challenge, with a toddler on the loose. The issue inspired a sliding wall of the ubiquitous birch plywood, which allows the eat-in kitchen to be enclosed, permitting the parents to keep the toddler away from the stairs while their hands are full in the kitchen.
An arched cutout in the bottom of the door ensures Sacha the cat maintains free reign even when the door is closed. This miniature archway is mirrored on the perpendicular wall, providing access to a hidden litterbox.
A third curved doorway, this one in the form of a birch gate, is added to the circular banister as assurance that neither cat nor kid has unmonitored access to the stairs or the rooms below.
Alex Delaunay, of Paris-and Brooklyn-based firm Sabo Project, designed the Sacha apartment in Paris to suit the unique needs of a French family that includes two parents, a toddler, and a feline companion.