Géricault studio – Paris, France

South of Montmartre, the Nouvelle Athènes neighbourhood was born out of early 19th-century Parisian real-estate speculation. It became home to a bourgeois community that included celebrity writers and artists of the

period.

In 1813, Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) moved into a high, white studio set back from the rue des Martyrs. The house and its front garden are now inscribed at the far end of a row of buildings that form a courtyard. Behind the garden gate, the large arched windows are visible, illuminating and signifying the studio space within. The ample, classical volume of the studio is crowned by a surbased vault that accentuates the space’s wide, regular geometry. Domestic functions that had come to clutter the central volume were redistributed on either side of the principal space. The open central bay is thus restored, bathed in the diffracted light of the garden that shines through the high vertical openings. The studio regains the atmo-sphere and respite characteristic of spaces infused with delicate variations of natural light. Once the greater restoration was complete, the tone of the intervention was set by two solid oak elements: a smooth floor that naps the totality of the studio and a bookshelf-staircase that faces the windows, rising up the far wall.