DATA SHEET

Owner/Hotel operator: Algonquin, Laure Bienvenu Hekayem, Waleran Guinard
Interior design: Studio Jean Philippe Nuel
Furnishings: Agenceur Fast ou Insight, La Palma, Muuto, Objet de CuriositÈ, Prostoria,
Vincent Sheppard
Lighting: Gallotti & Radice, KIKI líÈclaireur, iGuzzini, Modular, Rockett Saint George
Bathrooms: Grohe, Ideal Standard
Textiles, carpets, curtains: Galerie B, Guild, Lelièvre, Massimo Copenhagen, Rubelli
Flooring tiles: CMR, Vicalvi Contract, Winckelmans
Artists: Delphine Messmer (mosaic: entrance carpet), Gola Hundun (fresco in the interior court)
Photo credits: Nicolas Matheus

Hotel Le Belleval has ‘blossomed’ with its four-star hotel in Rue de la Pépinière, designed to be a secret garden in the heart of the lively shopping district of Saint-Lazare. The name evokes the father of scientific botany Pierre Richer de Belleval, and the architect Jean-Philippe Nuel pays homage to him by identifying nature as the fil vert, the joyful and vital element – albeit artificial – of the project that has remodelled the interior of an incredible Haussmann style building.

The entrance has been transformed into a monumental hall whose historical stratifications have been exalted; the central feature is the circular arrangement of sofas in capitonné leather, around which revolves the coming and going of guests and external users who have easy access to the bar and the restaurant on either side. Also on the ground floor, the reception leads to a large internal courtyard where the plant motif also climbs up the walls in the mural painted by the street artist Gola Hundun, leading to a library and an office. These are places of encounter and interaction in which the decoration combines trends and references capable of restoring soft atmospheres and a common domestic dimension.

The 52 rooms are conceived as unruffled but welcoming refuges reached through exuberant corridors of flowers, in the all-over version on the distinctive carpets of Galerie B, or stylised and monochromatic like the illustrations from old botany books that decorate the walls, with the dark boiserie of the frames restraining an explosive triumph of a wilder nature. The plant motif is continued in the rooms in the delicate floral patterns that adorn the carpets and some tapestries, in the graphics of the upholstery fabrics of armchairs and cushions by Guild, Rubelli and Lelièvre, and in the vintage citation of elements that alternate preciousness and sense of humour, with furnishing solutions that are different for each room.

To bring together all the interiors is instead the wall behind the bed, painted in blue tea leaf that rises high and models the space, creating contrast with the other volumes and large, full-height openings. The bathroom wall tiles are also coloured in blue tones, which align the key decorative subject with the retro wall compositions by Vicalvi Contract. The hotel also has a gym created under the magnificent vaulted ceiling of the basement.