After 7 years in the making, interior designer Didier Benderli presented a stunning design project on a 16th-century French château in the Parisian countryside. An unbelievable transformation of a classic and historical building into a contemporary luxury home with the most beautiful and exclusive furniture.
Asymmetrical furniture dominates in the library, where a midcentury sofa by Carlo de Carli and chairs by Ico Parisi surround a cocktail table by Gabriella Crespi.
After being asked to do a soft makeover on the place by adding some curtains and painting the walls, the Paris-based interior designer could not stay still and did a complete design overhaul.
In the living room, the playful lines of a Carlo de Carli sofa mirror the abstract shapes in a custom rug designed by Benderli. The woodwork was painted gray to add depth and dimension.
Though a 19th-century renovation lovingly preserved its intricate boiserie, the property had fallen into disrepair—the château’s lifetime has spanned several ownership changes, religious wars, and the French Revolution—and Benderli found the house and its surrounding outbuildings in need of an update that married their history and his client’s contemporary lifestyle.
Sculptor Philippe Anthonioz created a bronze-and-marble table anchored in the ground for the dining room, opposing the light and magnetic spiral of the Poul Hennigsen chandelier.
An Arne Jacobsen Egg chair serves as a modern counterpoint to the original stone fireplace.
Over the next seven years the place was introduced to new heating, ventilation, plumbing, and electrical systems and applying era-appropriate cosmetic fixes across the board: He restored fireplaces, installed antique parquet floors, and replaced windows and roofing tiles. He maintained the gilded accents that appear throughout the home but in the kitchen, he removed partitions to create an airy Calacatta marble-and-steel gathering space for entertaining family-style in the 21st century.
A 1930s Italian sofa by Guglielmo Ulrich, chairs by Gigi Radice, and a cocktail table by Fernando and Humberto Campana combine to create an elegant seating area in a bedroom dominated by artwork by Lu Chao. Art and design pieces seem to have played the biggest role on this renovation, bringing elegance and sophistication to this home decor.
A pair of Vladimir Kagan sofas, a polished copper Kam Tin cocktail table, and hanging lights by Poul Henningsen elevate the pool house. The floor lamp is by Silvio Bilangione, and the chair is by Helge Vestergaard Jensen. Here we experience a different design style, more modern and minimal with a scandinavian touch.
Benderli’s genre-bending aesthetic naturally extends to the furnishings and accessories, a mix of antique-store finds and modern-design classics. By choosing pieces of different styles and matching them with the history of the place, the designer managed o get an altogether masterpiece of a project. Maintaining the classical lines of the chateau and adding modern furniture to the building resulted in a contemporary neoclassical home that one craves to live in. The result is a home that will no doubt stand the test of time for another five centuries.
