Paris apartment built like a boat deck

Top floor, corner unit, Paris. Architect Cyrus Ardalan walked in and felt like he was standing at the prow of a ship. That became the brief.

The apartment belongs to DJ Louise Chen and her family. Ardalan renovated it with porthole-style openings cut into interior walls and deck-like plywood floors running the length of the space. The materiality is simple: marine-grade plywood throughout, white-painted walls, circular windows borrowed from yacht design. The corner location gave him two exposures; he treated the junction like a ship's bow.

The plywood isn't veneer. It's structural-grade sheet stock, the kind used in boat interiors where weight and water resistance matter. Ardalan left the edges exposed in some sections so the lamination shows. The floor planks run parallel to the longest wall, which amplifies the sense of forward motion when you walk through the flat.

The porthole openings aren't decorative. They frame sightlines between rooms without full doorways, a trick borrowed from below-deck quarters where space is tight and every opening serves double duty. One porthole looks from the kitchen into the living area. Another connects the hallway to a bedroom. The effect is less nautical-kitsch, more functional geometry.

Louise Chen's work as a DJ informed one decision: the living area has no internal partitions. Ardalan kept it as a single open room with the plywood floor acting as the only material shift between zones. A long built-in bench runs under the windows, upholstered in marine canvas.

The renovation took six months. Ardalan worked with a joiner who typically builds yacht interiors. That shows in the detailing: every plywood edge is beveled, every screw countersunk and plugged. The result reads less like a themed apartment and more like a flat where the architect took one metaphor and followed it to the joinery.