Charlotte Perriand still lives in this Paris tower flat

What stays with you here is not simply that a Paris apartment is for sale, but that so much of Charlotte Perriand’s thinking still seems to be in place. In Édouard Albert’s 1960 Albert Tower in the 13th arrondissement, a high-floor flat retains built-in storage, a kitchen and other interior elements attributed to Perriand. The apartment was once home to Swiss designer Ubald Klug and his wife Helena, a ceramicist, which adds another layer to its place in a postwar design circle around figures such as Jean Prouvé.

The article makes a good case for seeing the flat alongside the building itself. Albert Tower was an early experiment in Parisian high-rise housing, built with a metal grid of concrete-filled steel tube columns, reinforced concrete slabs and cross-bracing. Because the supporting structure is concentrated in pillars, the plan could be arranged with relative freedom, giving Perriand’s fitted cupboards and kitchen a flexible setting rather than treating furniture as something separate from the architecture.

Inside, the revealing details are the everyday ones: the entrance hall lined with wooden storage, the built-in kitchen cabinetry, the living and dining area, and wide windows looking across Paris towards landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, the Panthéon and Notre-Dame. It is a private home, not somewhere to visit, but it is worth reading as a compact lesson in how modernist ideas reached right down to shelves, drawers and the way a room works.

Our summary of a story from designboom, published 2 October 2026. Read the original

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