Bellecour

The clients came to us with the decisions already made. The green marble, the herringbone floors, the appliances, even the three arches behind the range had all been chosen before we drew a line.

So the work was never about choosing materials. It was about composition: getting a dozen strong pieces to behave like one room.

The house is unapologetically European, and it commits to color where most people would have played safe.

The stair is the piece you cannot look past. It curves, it is wrapped in Calacatta Viola with its violet veining, and the balustrade is black metal with gold scrollwork.

The first tread was widened on purpose. It slows you for one step, which is the whole difference between climbing stairs and making an entrance.

The living room is built around the fireplace. Calacatta Viola runs the full height of the wall, framed in dark wood, so the stone reads as one piece rather than a mantel added to a wall.

The opening is seven feet wide. At that size a fireplace stops being a detail and becomes the thing the furniture has to answer to.

The kitchen is the room everything else was measured against. Three arches of Prada Green marble sit behind the range with nothing in front of them, because the stone is the event.

Dark wood cabinetry, matte gold hardware, and a thin gold line traced around each arch. That line is the only ornament in the room.

An arched wine cabinet closes the run at the far end, lit from inside so the bottles read as part of the millwork rather than as storage.

The same herringbone oak runs from the living room straight through the kitchen. That is what keeps two large rooms reading as one floor instead of two.

The island is a single slab of the same green marble, with a double bowl carved straight into it so the sink never interrupts the surface.

Its fluted base does the quiet work. It breaks the mass into narrow verticals, so a very heavy stone still looks like it is standing lightly on the floor.

The dining table sits in the open, with no wall between it and the kitchen. Two clusters of glass globes hang low enough to mark where one room ends and the next begins.

The chairs are the one soft, unpolished thing on a floor full of stone and brass. That is what keeps the room from feeling like a showroom and makes it somewhere you would actually sit down to eat.