Dark Fantasy: Carlo Zollo’s 60 square meter apartment in Paris celebrates the dark side of the 80s

Fashion agent Carlo Zollo commissioned architect Cyrus Ardalan to renovate his apartment in a 1980s style. This exciting decade runs stylistically through the entire building.

The architectural face of Paris is known to be quite even. The typical Haussmann buildings of the 19th century characterize the boulevards of the city center – buildings of a maximum of six floors made of cream-colored limestone that the baron of the same name built during the reign of Napoleon III. desired urban renewal could be raised. The surprise and joy is all the greater when, on a stroll through Paris, you come across architectural outliers, creative foreign bodies in the Haussmannian homogeneity that tell of different aesthetic canons and other stylistic eras. At least for Carlo Zollo, an Australian with Italian roots who, as co-founder and director of the fashion agency Clothes Agency, spends his life between Paris, Milan and London. For years, the qualified architect was looking for a house that corresponded to his idea of ​​perfection – and it definitely wouldn’t be a Haussmann apartment. He had something in mind in Mario Botta’s compact style, preferably in brick and with a round arch.

The architect Olivier Nodé-Langlois built the tower-like postmodern house as a studio. It offers the ideal backdrop for the eighties fantasies of Carlo Zollo – or his alter ego.

Francesco Dolfo

An apartment like something out of a fantasy novel

He finally found what he was looking for in the 11th arrondissement. In an area that was previously known for metalworking, he came across the former studio of the architect Olivier Nodé-Langlois, which he had built in 1989 – made of brick, with a round arch. “When I entered the rooms, about 60 square meters on two levels, there was no bathroom or kitchen and they were in pretty bad shape.” “But I could already see what it would become,” Zollo remembers. “I simply love the Parisian aesthetic of the 1980s, that of the Center Pompidou, that is my Belle Époque!” And the renovation, which he entrusted to the architect Cyrus Ardalan, is based almost exclusively on that decade, but also the furniture, which he gradually put together in the city’s relevant vintage galleries, such as the Remix Gallery. Furniture by Gianfranco Frattini and Vico Magistretti, by a not yet famous, very experimental Philippe Starck, lighting by Tronconi and flea market finds contribute to the theme of postmodernism, which is underlined by the sculptural presence of the original iron spiral staircase with leather-covered steps.