In Residence: Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas

Step Inside the First Couple of Italian Architecture's Paris Apartment 

Architects, of course, work with space and light, not bricks and mortar. These are the raw materials. That’s especially true of the places they make or remake for themselves; often unassuming, discreet, already there, not very architectural, but always with high ceilings and tall windows. “Real luxury is to have volume, light from outside,” says Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas, who since 1981 has been working alongside his wife Doriana. They live and work together and try not to have too much architecture in either place. “If you build every day, if you plan every day some contemporary building, it’s fantastic to live in an old one,” he says. “It’s fantastic the contradiction between what you are and what kind of life you live.” They house their 100-strong practice in a restored Renaissance palazzo in Rome, not far from Piazza Navona. Home however, is a Paris apartment on the Place des Vosges, captured here by French director Benjamin Seroussi. “If you move from one city to another in Europe, it’s one-hour-and-a-half or two hours flight. Europe is one country, it’s a continuous space,” says Massimiliano, who in 2013 took a cinematic approach to the design of Shenzen Bao’an International airport. “I think Rome and Paris are the last memories of what was ‘the city’. This is the last memory that we have. But we are part of all the world now.”–Nick Compton (Senior Contributing Editor of Wallpaper*).