Leafy greenery breathes everyday living into all the rooms of Alexa Funès’s 1930s household in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux. “We have mother nature everywhere you go,” she claims, chatting from her home office environment where by, behind her, the tendrils of a living wall steadily creep skywards. Downstairs, a dining room extension has been made so that there’s a robust relationship with the terrace that wraps about the home. Even the toilet has a tropical truly feel, opening on to a balcony decoratedhung with ferns and a holiday getaway-temper hammock.
Alexa lives in this article with her partner, Albin, and their sons who are, aged 8 and 10, and has ongoing the verdant concept in the dwelling area, exactly where actual vegetation combine with framed herbaria – big leaves that have been dried, pressed and framed between two levels of glass.
This system of preserving tropical leaves in the way has a long heritage as a way to system of pinpointing specimens, usually for medicinal purposes. “Aside from their scientific heritage, these tropical leaves also search beautiful,” claims Alexa, an architect and inside designer who heads up the company Atelier Germain. Two several years ago she acquired fellow the French business Jardin Pamplemousse, which had been building herbaria for more than 20 several years. “These exclusive objectsThey are even now manufactured in a workshop in the vicinity of Paris, where all the things is performed by hand, from drying the leaves to cutting the glass and framing them,” she clarifies. “But I could see how a little modernising their appearance could enable them reach the notice they deserve.”
On the walls of Alexa’s residence, these giant leaf silhouettes include purely natural affect to her deliberately pared-again techniques. In the family’s residing place, with the exception of just one wall painted in chartreuse, most of the home furnishings and surfaces come in shades of black, white or grey. “I like to use neutral colours as my foundation, then I personalise a space by introducing objects and a several dashes of colour,” Alexa explains. She also finds that a neutral foundation can make it less complicated to improve factors around if she will get bored. “Pretty promptly, you can make a area feel absolutely new.” she adds.
Alexa and Albin Funès manufactured a larger-scale improve to their dwelling tThree yrs ago, the couple when they included the dining home extension, encroaching into element of their smaller backyard garden. This may seem counterintuitive for persons who love greenery, but the room’s roof lights and sliding glass doorways mean that it is a a lot more realistic way to enjoy the fantastic outdoor, all calendar year spherical. What the spouse and children lost in sq. metres of in backyard house, they received in usable inside room. “It also totally changed the come to feel of the adjoining kitchen and residing area further than that,” she claims. “Now, there is a feelingsense of circularity to the three spaces, which truly feel mild and linked to the outside the house – which is usually a fantastic matter in my e-book.”
Alexa freely admits she has a factor for tropical gardens and greenhouses and, before vacation restrictions, she loved viewing historic gardens. Her favourites include La Bambouseraie in Cévennes, the Unique Backyard garden in Monaco and the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Yard in Miami. Nearer to household, Serres d’Auteuil in Paris now keeps her botanical concentrations topped up: “These spots are a vivid reminder of the elegance of nature and its influence on us,” she states.
As each an architect and an inside designer, Alexa is generally contemplating how purpose intersects with fashion and is an admirer of the perform of the early modernist designer Charlotte Perriand. “Her types generally target on functionality and her compact kitchen for Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse is amazing. And, of system, I appreciate her LC4 chaise.”
Furnishings in this family members residence is a higher-small mix, with style and design classics, this sort of as Sori Yanagi’s vintage Butterfly stool for Vitra, functioning together with mainstream products by Built.com, Home Doctor and Caravanne. Then there are lots of products from Atelier Germain, designed in-house or by collaborators that Alexa often provides on board.
By tending to the greater structure and the lesser facts of these areas, Alexa has produced rooms that work for her family members. “It’s a home full of gentle and character,” she adds. “During lockdown, this home unquestionably built our confinement happier.”
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