A studio on the seventh floor of its building, overlooking the rooftops of Montmartre, has a terrace almost as large as the apartment itself and, of course, breathtaking views of Paris. “You can see the city in the distance from this hilltop, and as the sun makes its way through the sky with it passing clouds, the light becomes more or less bright, the colors change, and the entire scene can look like an abstract work,” says Dev Gupta, architect and cofounder with Olivia Charpentier and Alexandre Goulet of GCG Architects, which has offices in Paris, Nice, and New Delhi. This little rooftop aerie, where the spectacular view steals the show, measures 323 square feet, and then there’s an additional 215 square feet outdoors, the terrace.
Largely untouched since the 1970s, it had been the apartment of a former dancer in Vegas-style reviews from that decade. “We found period photos and an unpermitted terrace atop the zinc roof—it was like a combination of a terrasse vénitienne [an elevated terrace above a sloped roof] and a wild pontoon boat! The apartment itself had a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living room all separated by very thin partitions.” The architects were given free rein when renovating this little belvedere, a satellite of a triplex that the studio had designed nearby. “This is its annex, the guest house of the owners, who entrusted us with its total renovation, from the redesign of the terrace to creating new openings to take advantage of the views. We reimagined the terrace and all of the apartment’s decor and furnishings, everything from the cutlery to the sheets,” Charpentier says with a laugh. The client’s only requirement was a firm delivery date when the keys had to be handed over; otherwise, the architects were on their own.
