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In an 18th-century building in Paris’s Palais Royal district, Charlotte Albert and Alexis Lamesta, founders of Necchi Architecture, have returned a former architect’s studio to the drawing board, transforming it into two compact, but elegant, apartments for Pied à Terre Paris. Emma Becque and Isabel Bronts take a tour.
BY EMMA BECQUE | ROOMS & GARDENS | 12 MARCH 2026
The brief for the project was clear: “a discreet, elegant, intellectual, yet non-ostentatious apartment, with a dose of the 1990s,” explains Charlotte Albert of Necchi Architecture.
A sofa inspired by the work of Jean-Michel Frank sits proudly in the sitting room of a newly completed apartment on Rue Chabanais in Paris’s Palais Royal district, signalling Necchi Architecture's instincts for reconstruction. Sourced from an Italian atelier, it is upholstered in two contrasting velvets, one by Pierre Frey and another from Sister by Studio Ashby.
“Nothing is precious. Everything must be lived with,” explain designers Charlotte Albert and Alexis Lamesta, the founders of Paris-based design studio, Necchi Architecture. The fabric, which might seem unexpected within the apartment's classical proportions and clean lines, introduces a welcome note of playfulness, precisely as intended.
The designers are hands-on, often returning from the local flea market with newly discovered objects. A vintage iron-cast coffee table now sits perfectly placed for guests to rest their drinks, while an Italian Art Deco lamp with petal-like features, sourced during a trip, is an intentional curiosity fanning light across the room. Their aesthetic fingerprints are felt throughout the interior and across the city in some of Paris’s most notable design addresses.
The material palette is equally deliberate: "white-veneer oak lines the walls, while beneath it runs a floor of Marquina and antique marble laid in navette patterns", says Albert. The apartment is one of the latest additions to Pied à Terre Paris's portfolio, founded by Andrea Bokobsa and Nathaniel Glas in 2021, who have worked with Necchi on previous projects, every time with the aim of bringing unique style to the city's short-term rental market.
“I founded Pied à Terre with the idea of creating a true alternative to traditional luxury hotels,” explains Andrea Bokobsa. "We craft the spaces for return visits."
Bokobsa established Pied à Terre in 2020 with the ambition of creating an alternative to traditional luxury hotels, developing apartments shaped by architecture rather than decoration. The residence occupies a building dating back to 1775, part of the fabric of apartments built in Paris shortly before the French Revolution.
Its tall ceilings and generous proportions remain intact, a quality Bokobsa considers fundamental to the space's experience. “Every project begins with the bones of the building,” he explains. “We respect the structure and history of the place, then introduce a contemporary layer that reflects our aesthetic language.”
Art Deco abstraction, Eileen Gray, Jean-Michel Frank, and the mineral architecture of Vauban inform the apartment’s limestone-effect frescoes and mineral surfaces.
Necchi Architecture's approach to interiors centres on materials and structure rather than decorative layering. “We design through narrative and material,” the pair explain, describing a process guided by reduction, precision and atmosphere, in which stone, carved woods and textiles are balanced within a clear architectural framework.
The commission carried a certain symmetry for the studio, with the apartment having originally been an architectural office before its conversion. “This was a 360 moment for us,” the architects say, describing how the expansive space was divided into two apartments for Pied à Terre while preserving the clarity of the original volume.
The floor provides the first architectural gesture where the duo took inspiration from the local “Vauban, which led to a mineral, textured universe that feels cultured without being demonstrative.” With non-rectified Marquina and antique marble laid in navettes, the pattern softens the natural drama of the stone as it floods the apartment. From there, the interior expands through carved oak panels in alternating pale and dark woods, unpolished burgundy stone, and sheets of silky steel, which cast soft rays rather than armour.
“Wood dominates this interior”, remarks Lamesta. Panels of white-veneer oak embrace the mineral surfaces of marble and piano lacquer. “The organic materials drove the project,” the architects explain. “This natural fibre was the first element we had in mind, and the whole project grew from that texture.” The result is classical in spirit without becoming austere, an interior shaped through proportion and material rather than stylistic display.
“The apartments are not neutral; they have a point of view. Ideally, guests feel both at home and slightly transported,” says Andrea of Pied à Terre Paris.
The architects describe their approach simply: “We embed character into structure, not styling.” Necchi Architecture’s recent work across Paris includes the mirror-lined interiors of the Chimère brasserie on rue du 4 Septembre and the Cinabre boutique and suites on Cité Bergère, where a tented room cascades across the pocket-sized space.
The atmosphere on this project is deliberately more domestic. “Andrea did not want a cinematic feeling,” the architects explain. “He wanted an apartment that feels like a family space, with a working kitchen and wardrobe, on a homely scale.” Practical details follow this logic, including integrated storage, generous circulation, and a music system that allows families to entertain in the apartment.
Slabs of Marquina and antique marble laid in navette patterns harmonise with unexpected elements such as a sculptural pony-hair daybed.
Designing interiors for short stays requires clarity, comfort, intuitive circulation, and durable materials, while the apartment must also feel immediately legible upon arrival. For Bokobsa, the ambition remains simple: visitors should feel the apartment has been deliberately composed while remaining entirely liveable. “The apartments are not neutral,” he says. “They have a point of view.”
As the architects themselves describe it, “memorable Parisian interiors emerge from a particular balance. When mineral surfaces meet lacquer, when patina meets precision and when culture meets comfort, the result is an interior that feels both restrained and unmistakably Parisian.”
Inspired by French artworks, the palette combines “empereur Blue, smoked ivory, wild silks and parchment finishes”, giving the compact interior “erudite” character.
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