THE ART OF DESIGN

Partners Luis Laplace and Christophe Comoy have become the premier architects of the art world thanks to their keen eyes and willingness to truly listen to what clients want //

By Jeffrey T Iverson

LAPLACE, SIMPLY PUT , is a design firm like no other. Founded in Paris in 2004, its rise into the hallowed ranks of Architectural Digest’s AD100 list has been fuelled by the uncommon talents of its founders, the Argentinian architect Luis Laplace and the French lawyer Christophe Comoy. It’s a partnership that has bridged not only the New World with the Old, but merged the realms of art and design with the client-centred codes of the service industry. In an era of self-aggrandising, signature architects, Luis Laplace has distinguished himself less by his audacity than his sensitivity, celebrating art and nature before his own creative brilliance, through bespoke interiors and architectural designs with a palpable sense of place.

Born in Buenos Aires, Laplace’s first passion wasn’t for design, but the ceramic arts. He carried that artistic sensibility into his profession after graduating from Universidad de Belgrano in 1995 with a Master’s Degree in Architecture & Urbanism. Moving to New York, he would cut his teeth with Selldorf Architects. There, in a decade that saw a resurgence of minimalism, Laplace refined a vision of architecture wholly at odds with the white cube template then in vogue. “Minimalism makes for a nice photo, but generally it doesn’t work in real life,” he says. “For me, it means lack of personality, of history, lack of everything.” Laplace, on the contrary, imagined designs steeped in character and context, informed by a client’s needs, tastes and – whenever possible – art collection.

In 2002, Selldorf sent Laplace to Mallorca to oversee the construction of a residence for the owner of one of the most important contemporary art collections in Europe – Ursula Hauser, co-founder of the Hauser & Wirth gallery. The project

Different Strokes

Luis Laplace, left and Christophe Comoy have a unique take on design; facing page their work at Mount Street Restaurant, London, one of many collaborations with Hauser & Wirth was a turning point for Laplace, whose masterstrokes included placing one of Louise Bourgeois’ giant bronze Maman spiders in the middle of Hauser’s living room. In 2004, he moved to Paris and founded a firm with his partner, Christophe Comoy, whom he’d met in New York in 2001. Soon, he would become the art world’s architect of choice, designing residences for gallerists such as Iwan and Manuela Wirth, Emmanuel Perrotin, artists like Cindy Sherman, and collectors from Mick Flick to Adriana Abascal. Comoy, with his Gallic tastes and acute business mind, offered the perfect foil to the creative Argentinian. By situating the firm in Paris, the men were able to begin sourcing antiques from the city’s flea markets and auction houses, while also establishing relationships with French cabinetmakers and craftspeople, creating a private line of Laplace-designed furnishings for their clients. In time, they developed a worldwide network of local contractors, architects and artisans, to be able to mastermind projects large and small, inside and out. “I think our business model is unique, in that we can build a house from scratch, and deliver everything down to the silverware,” says Comoy. “It’s a one-stop firm. When we’re finished, the clients arrive with their toothbrush.”

This conception of architecture, which shifts the focus from the designer’s ego to the client’s needs, came naturally for Laplace. “It comes with being curious and empathetic people, always trying to understand the desires of the person before you,” he says. Where another designer might impose his own signature style, Laplace uses his formidable cultural and artistic fluency to enhance the existing beauty in a space, its owner, and their collection. As he puts it, “We never use art as a decoration … we design for its installation and rotation.” In Laplace’s interiors, furnishings often appear to have been unpacked from the paintings themselves. In the home of a Mexican film producer, the spiral motif in an Alexander Calder tapestry is echoed in the curves of a chair by George Nakashima. In an art connoisseur’s Parisian apartment, the geometrics of a tableau by Yves Laloy seem to have re-emerged as the hexagonal 1950s Hans Andersen furnishings and angular 1961 Max Ingrand sconces. In the living room, parchment-covered cocktail tables, designed by Laplace, could have been plucked out of a painting by the surrealist Victor Brauner.

Often, the very structure of a Laplace residence is designed to better contemplate an artwork or the surrounding environment. At a collector’s Alpine getaway, a swimming pool serves as the watery screen on which an oneiric video installation by the artist Pipilotti Rist is projected. At a villa overlooking a wild stretch of the Pacific coastline, instead of using glass walls to create an uninterrupted view of the seascape, Laplace divided the panorama into a series of visual moments, using stone framed terraces, bay windows and intimate patios. “When you see everything at once you can’t appreciate it all, the cliff, the rocks,

LAPLACE PERFECT

Clockwise from top left : Spider 1994, by Louise Bourgeois in the central patio of Hauser & Wirth’s Menorcan art centre; a private house design; Casa Luz, Mexico; The Audley, London the bay, the open sea,” he explains, “so we use architecture to help you to focus on one moment, through a single frame.”

Iwan Wirth, co-founder of Hauser & Wirth, whose empire of galleries spans three continents, calls Laplace “the silent architect” for his willingness to be subsumed by his creations – and by the art and nature they sublimate. In 2012, Hauser & Wirth asked Laplace to help them revamp the 18th-century Durslade farm in Somerset, England, into an art centre. As preparation, Laplace studied the English countryside and the passion for gardening there. “Everything teaches you something, from how narrow the roads are, to how the hedges are trimmed,” he says. “It’s inspiring to take all that in, to identify a place’s DNA, and then enhance and celebrate it through our work.”

Instead of building over the derelict stables, piggeries, granaries and barns, he gave them new life, transforming them into a series of connected spaces, each punctuated by a picturesque view of woodland, fields, or sky. Opened in 2014, The Architectural Review proclaimed it “an anti-Bilbao … The aim is not to give the town a new identity, a new icon, but to celebrate the beauty it already has to hand.”

Over the last decade, Laplace has assisted Hauser & Wirth in similar renovations around the globe. In 2021, a conservation project that saw Laplace convert an 18th-century naval hospital on Menorca’s Illa del Rei into another art centre received numerous accolades, from Wallpaper*’s “2022 Best Art Destination” to a European Heritage Award. Now Laplace is collaborating with Hauser & Wirth on two more projects – the transformation of a 19th-century hôtel particulier into Hauser & Wirth’s first Paris location Rue François 1er, and the creation of their new flagship London gallery in the iconic Goode Building, a Victorian jewel built 1875-76 in the heart of Mayfair.

With multiple ongoing projects on different continents, Laplace and Comoy felt themselves nearing a breaking point a few years ago and realised something had to change – to preserve their own wellbeing, but also that of the hundreds they employ. “Public commissions for the renovation of our architectural heritage are in decline today, skills are being lost,” says Comoy. “So we feel it’s our duty to help save the country’s artisan traditions, by providing that talent with work on private projects here and overseas.” The solution to keeping it all afloat, they finally realised, was NetJets. Suddenly, a two-day trip to visit a project in Engadin, Switzerland, attend an art fair in Britain, meet a client in Menorca and another in Capri, became more than viable.

“They make it seamless,” says Comoy. “We travel for work, and for the hundreds of craftspeople we now represent.” Which are so many more reasons why we’ll hope Laplace continues casting that sensitive eye of his around the globe, from the Old World to the New. luislaplace.com