Interior designer Damien Langlois-Meurinne brought this apartment, nestled in a 21st century mansion, on the Ile Saint-Louis, in Paris, into the 21st century. With wit and rigor, he knew how to mix contemporary works of art, design pieces and patchwork of materials. The result is a subtle, velvety elegance.

Interior designer Damien Langlois-Meurinne has magical memories of his first visit to this magnificent Parisian apartment on the Isle of St. Louis. "He found it on a snowy day in the dead of winter, and everything was immaculate and silent, which gave him the feeling of entering a chateau de Provence.

Owned by a French couple, the place is located on the noble floor of the only wing of an imposing mansion built between 1637 and 1642, originally with its own French garden.        In the nearer past, it had been decorated for its former owners by Jacques Garcia in a highly classical spirit with 17th century furniture, wall hangings and yellow and red tones.

Although the apartments differ in style, the architects made few changes to their structure. His original intention was to demolish a series of mezzanines built by a property developer in the 1980s, but he did not get permission. He turned the volume limitations of the rooms in question into assets, making them particularly comfortable. Damien Langlois-Meurinne used them as boxes to unify the colours of the walls and ceiling." It's a way of cocooning them, and other ways have defined modernity. "He wanted to bring the apartment into the 21st century.

The monumental fireplace in the Calacatta Oro marble living room is the perfect example, with its sober lines and pure geometric shapes.  The contemporary character of the works of art and the furniture, brought together with the collaboration of the Parisian consulting firm Aster responsible for making proposals in art and design, is also a complete break with the decor previously imagined by Jacques Garcia.