Background
Paris-based Hauvette & Madani grew out of the friendship and complementary instincts of Samantha Hauvette and Lucas Madani, who met while studying interior architecture and design at École Camondo. They founded the studio in 2010, directly after graduating, and built its reputation first through private residential commissions before expanding into hospitality, offices and retail. Both bring personal visual histories to the partnership: Hauvette has described growing up in an artistic family, while Madani, raised in Paris after being born in the United States, was exposed early to construction through his carpenter/site-manager father and to image-making through his photographer mother. Their process remains deliberately collaborative: sketches, moodboards, plans and decoration are repeatedly exchanged and challenged until the pair find what they call the “right balance.” Recognition followed steadily, and they are now among the country’s leading design talents.
Signature Style
The studio’s shorthand—“modernism with patina”—is useful because their rooms rarely feel newly installed. Hauvette & Madani aim for interiors that appear to have accumulated naturally over time: architecturally disciplined, but softened by age, craft and a slightly sensual sense of comfort. They mix periods rather than pursue a total look, pairing vintage and contemporary pieces with custom furniture and carefully worked surfaces. Wood is especially important, as are marble, lacquer, brass, ceramics and tactile textiles; colour often comes through the intrinsic tone of these materials rather than through a decorative palette applied afterward. They work closely with artisans to develop specific woods, varnishes and patinas, deliberately avoiding the anonymous perfection of something “brand new.” Their references are broad but recurring: the decorative arts, Art Deco and the 1960s–70s, with modernist influences running throughout. Yet functionality stays central. The duo describes its philosophy as hedonistic: spaces should support real life — conversation, family, entertaining — and be as satisfying to inhabit as they are to photograph.
Showstoppers
Hôtel Wallace, their first hotel, turned a largely characterless Parisian property into a narrative of travel: corridors recall 1960s American motels, while compact rooms borrow the intimacy and ingenuity of luxury sleeper cabins, with lacquered wood, sliding elements and retro lighting. At Villa Guggenbühl, André Lurçat’s modernist house facing Parc Montsouris, the duo resisted period pastiche, instead amplifying the building’s simple geometry with stained maple, smoked bronze mirror, vintage Italian lighting and furniture spanning decades. Their Avenue Montaigne apartment for an art collector takes the opposite architectural problem: after previous renovations had erased its Haussmannian character, Hauvette & Madani reconstructed the historical envelope while keeping broad wall surfaces suitable for contemporary art, then punctuated it with straw marquetry, bespoke elements and unexpected colour.
