Big ideas and perfect proportions in a compact Parisian flat

A small apartment in France makes an impact by mixing contrasting colours and materialsWhen interior designer Stéphan Bidoux first visited his apartment in Paris’s 10th arrondissement over a decade ago, it hadn’t been occupied for years. “It looked more or less as if it had been abandoned,” he recalls. “It was in a disastrous state, completely beaten up, with lots of things broken.” On the lower level were three tiny, separate rooms, which were not at all connected with the attic floor above. To see the latter, Bidoux had to pop his head through a trapdoor in the ceiling of the building’s communal landing.Back then, Bidoux had only just embarked on a career in interiors (he’d previously been in marketing and advertising) and the work he did was largely architectural. He joined the two floors together, inserting a strikingly geometric steel staircase between the two. He also opened up the space almost completely. “I like it when there are as few constraints as possible,” he says. “That’