Holiday Home on Lake Geneva by Hauvette & Madani

When your pied-à-terre overlooks Lake Geneva, there is little you’d have to do to enhance your living conditions. An obnoxiously green, geometrical garden, replete with a bright blue pool and cool white stone sets the tone for what is enveloped within the marbled, light exterior of this modern villa. One could almost imagine George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Vincent Cassel seated outside drinking a sundowner and discussing just how Cassel managed to steal a Fabergé Egg. (Spoiler: he didn’t).

Inside, it’s all about curation, and the team at Hauvette & Madani did not hold back, sourcing from renowned galleries and collectors such as the Workshop Carpenters Gallery, Galerie Gaston in Paris and Galerie Ormond in Switzerland. The red string threaded through all these collectors’ items, is a clever use of teak to frame moments and block out the space as well as a series of custom furniture pieces designed by the French duo, adding a sense of elevation with intent.

Yellowtrace Hauvette Madani Cologny Geneva Apartment Photo Lucas Madani 08

The colour palette is positively autumnal, and has been set on two axis, the horizontal being represented by the custom living room carpet with it’s burnt umber, subdued stone and rust red colour curation, the vertical by the bulbous Sossas Totem, framed by the floor to ceiling windows overlooking Cassel’s hypothetical garden and taking up space as if it existed long before the house itself. From totem to teak, the Pierre Paulin and Platner, Knoll pieces woven in between seem baby-proofed in their soft, rotund nature with no edge being left unbuffed.

This roundness is taken vertical once more, as we see the Taccia Giacometti lamp, comfortably perched on a teak console done in the style of André Sornay, having an enlightening conversation with the Apparatus Studio wall sconces hung above the existing fireplace. Adjacent, two timber slab door inserts seem to part the wall and open it up to expose a path through to the dining room, a cul-de-sac flooded by the light coming in through yet another lofty window.

Yellowtrace Hauvette Madani Cologny Geneva Apartment Photo Lucas Madani 12

Yellowtrace Hauvette Madani Cologny Geneva Apartment Photo Lucas Madani 13

The kitchen cools it right down with sage-forest green casework and stainless steel hardware, along with a peep of streaky green marble to tie it back to the classic foundations of the home.

We’re reminded again of the curatorial drivers of the home as we see architectural chairs by Gio Ponti and Luigi Dominioni placed in the atelier, a rose tinted Poliedri Murano glass chandelier suspended in the hall, and a Pierre Augustin Rose sofa placed as a landing for the vast Davide Groppi designed moon pendant suspended above, in one of the rooms. In fact, all evidence seems to point back to Cassel as the Ocean’s 12 art-collector-cum-thief residing here, and it would come as no surprise if a Fabergé Egg was displayed on a plinth in the bathroom.