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You never know what kind of scene you might arrive at when walking through the front door of Maison Rocher in Paris, the private address of French entrepreneur Jérémy Rocher and his family. Last year, 40 people chatted at a long banquet table in the white calm of the vaulted, 220sq m salon to launch the city’s new design fair Matter and Shape. More recently, the ambience switched to intimate and hushed with the installation of candlelit tables at a dinner to launch the Danish design brand Frama’s collaboration with Beni rugs.
The apartment was transformed again last month by an exhibition curated by the art adviser Étienne Macret and Carpenters Workshop New York’s former director Ashlee Harrison during Art Basel and Design Miami Paris. A mix of art, collectable furniture and design objects from galleries such as David Zwirner and Carpenters, the pieces were arranged in situ as they might be in a home – among them coffee tables by Vincent Dubourg and Vincenzo De Cotiis nestled with a Marzio Cecchi Serpente sofa, and Martin Szekely’s aluminium-rimmed West Coast dining table (once owned by Karl Lagerfeld) complemented by six hyper-colourful Franz West chairs.
But outside of such events (which have cemented Maison Rocher as one of the city’s most talked-about venues), it is indeed a real home: one that Rocher shares with his partner, the Australian designer Kym Ellery, their two young children and their rescue dog, Miso. On a rainy Sunday, you might find Ellery seated on a long sofa, eight-month-old Amaia napping next to her, while Armand, two, performs toddler body slams into the padded sofa cushions. Above them, a calming blue glow emits from a sphere-shaped James Turrell on a wall.
“The idea with this apartment was to have a space where you are disconnected from the city. The curved forms have a cocooning effect,” says Rocher of the vision and an aesthetic – monastic and minimal but also enveloping – that sits outside the typical Parisian canon. From the antechamber, empty save for a peachy-hued draped wax sculpture by the French artist Juliette Minchin, a series of arched openings leads into the vaulted salon. The long room curves around the corner of the building and is flanked by 10 floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a park – the leafy outlook lends to the feeling of being perched in the trees. Everywhere, lightness abounds, supercharged by the reflective terrazzo flooring.
Rocher bought the property six years ago, though he and Ellery only moved in last year. “It’s funny, the property was on the market for six months because people didn’t see the potential behind it,” he says of what was formerly two office spaces fitted with partition walls, false ceilings and carpeting. “Even the windows and skylights were hidden,” he adds, pointing skyward. We’re seated at an immense island bench in the kitchen – big enough to plate up a sit-down dinner for 40-plus people – just off the living room. In contrast to the glowing white of the main space, the bench is cut in jewel-like Patagonia granite that also covers the floor. Around us full-height oak cabinets meet ceiling panels framing a series of skylights.
At first, the 40-year-old envisaged Maison Rocher as a potential commercial art space but loved it so much that he decided it could also work as a Parisian crash pad, given that he was living abroad (between Hong Kong and Milan) at the time.
The floorplan circles the building’s inner stairwell, and the private quarters – three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a dressing room and a laundry – sit at the back of the apartment. They can be concealed by a secret door in the kitchen cabinet or, on the other side, by sliding partition doors designed to disappear into the walls.
The “at home” feeling that resonates here was overseen by architect Simon Pesin, who was briefed to create “a home and a meeting place for art”. Of the art-encounter element, he says: “Jérémy wanted to create an ‘anti-gallery’ to get away from the cliché of concrete floors, orthogonal white walls and technical spotlights.” Together Rocher and Pesin gave the space rhythm with the archways, curved walls and ceilings – organic forms inspired by the art nouveau motifs on the exterior of the building, with nods to Antoni Gaudí, Barbara Hepworth and the showstopping fireplaces of French ceramicist Valentine Schlegel.
It is the rhythm that Ashlee Harrison, who is also Design Miami LA’s curatorial director, instantly tuned into when organising the exhibition. “The volumes of the space allow for curating intimate moments without it being overwhelming,” she says. “It feels more personal, which enables collectors to understand the relationship between the works and how they might translate into a domestic setting, albeit loosely contextualised.”
Rocher, the grandson of the late cosmetics entrepreneur Yves Rocher, cuts a stylish figure in his home wearing his trademark uniform: a black T-shirt, jeans, sneakers and cap (he shops at Prada, Uniqlo and Comme Des Garçons). In addition to a prior career as CEO of the accessories brand Côte & Ciel and the now-defunct fashion brand Damir Doma, he has long been a collector and investor, and was an early shareholder in the online art platform Artsy.
The Rocher family are entrepreneurial but also creative. Rocher’s father Daniel is a sculptor and the founder of the open-air contemporary art space Château Charleval in Provence. His two sisters, Noemie and Aurélia, are both artists. Ellery, too, has successfully transitioned from fashion into collectable furniture design and sculpture. “There has always been an artistic and a business side in the family, and I like being between the two,” Rocher says. “What I love is the exchange you can have with artists and the emotion I feel in front of works of art.”
With Maison Rocher, he hoped to support and enhance such possibilities. He sees the proliferation of art fairs as akin to Fashion Weeks – inexhaustible whistlestop tours in major capital cities that leave little time for contemplation. “You just go from stand to stand, past different galleries and themes. There’s too many people, too much information,” he says, adding that we should appreciate what is in front of us. “This is a place to exchange and disconnect.”
Some of the works Rocher has acquired, like those by Turrell and Minchin, are now integral to the architecture – a permanent part of the experience. He gets his kicks, however, from mixing things up and seeing how collaborators interpret the space. “I want to incorporate more installation-based works to ensure the place evolves, and I love it when someone comes in with a different perspective and way of presenting,” he notes.
But the self-described minimalist – a necessity, he says, having lived in 13 apartments in 15 years – admits that flexibility will not be compatible with family life for long. Thus far, it’s proven to be a happy home. Ellery, in particular, loves the place: “There is loads of space, and the location is central, so we often have friends to visit,” she says, looking around the apartment. “But if you feel like hibernating, it’s also very cosy. I love to lie on the sofa in the sun and take it all in.” She has been teaching their son Armand that art is for looking at, rather than touching – especially the alluring light-dance of the Turrell.
“Armand also loves the bathtub,” says Rocher as he leads us into the main bathroom, which has a solid oval-shaped marble tub, a vibrant camo-hued slab from a quarry in the south of France. He likens the marble to a painting – although, weighing 500kg, it proved the most challenging work to install.
If the family outgrows the space, there may be an opportunity to take the immersive element to the next level. Rocher has acquired a tourism licence and is considering creating a highly curated overnight experience where guests live with bespoke selections of art and objects. “Today, there is a huge financial facet to the art market, but the original purpose of art is to bring us outside ourselves, to confront ourselves in its reflection and to create emotion,” he says. “It was never meant to be locked away in storage.”