Paris. Atelier Ariel Claudet designs a studio on the banks of the Seine river

Shaker Studio sits in a 1666 Paris building, located on the banks of the river Seine, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This project reflects the Parisian middle-class’ struggle to keep living in central neighbourhoods. The client is a retired professor of sociology who settled in the building at a time when apartments in the neighbourhood were still affordable. He then decided to rent out a studio in his apartment: his brief was to design an attractive 22 sqm space to be rented out on web platforms.

After 350 years of alterations, the apartment has no straight surfaces, nor parallel walls. The chosen material for the characterisation of the interiors is copper. The pipes made of this metal are easy to find and install, and to adapt to the various corners of the studio. Most remarkably, copper has the poetic quality of showing off its history when it ages. During the construction, the material was handled without gloves so that it would carry the fingerprints of the workers. This patina occurs in all the parts of the pipes, which route was devised on site as decisions were taken inches by inches.