In recent times, the AD100 French Mexican architect Hugo Toro has taken the approach of an auteur, working on a carte blanche basis to realize his commissioned projects down to the last exacting detail. For the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme’s new crown jewel, restaurant Pur’, home to Michelin-starred chef Jean-François Rouquette, Toro conceived everything, even the napkin rings and the staff uniforms. Currently, he is putting the final touches on La Minerva hotel in Rome, the Orient Express’s five-star accommodation just steps from the Pantheon, which will be a complete embodiment of his architectural vision.
For his latest residential project on Paris’s Left Bank, a 1911 mansion comprising more than 10,000 square feet spread across six floors, the clients—a French family—were happy to hand him the reins with just one stipulation: They wanted a fish tank. “That’s a first,” the 35-year-old admits of the two-and-a-half-ton aquarium he had installed into a wall in the ground-floor family room, adding with a smile, “I left it up to them to choose the fish.”
The project is Toro’s largest (completed) private home to date. “These are very rare buildings,” he says of the history and scale of the site, which features six bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool, a rooftop terrace, and a garden.
When he first visited in February 2022, the house had sat empty for 15 years and was in disrepair. Water damage and mold marked the ornate, gilded plasterwork, and paint—in a fusty Empire red—was peeling off the walls. “They wanted me to bridge the gap between the past and today: to respect the building but create a new stratification of style and time references,” he says of the brief, which was to unearth some of the building’s original charm—the Art Nouveau curves of the window frames and a more muted palette they found when they scraped at the walls—and create something more distinct.
The result is a mix of familiar Parisian opulence—soaring high ceilings and windows, wainscoting and restored moldings, herringbone floors—with the loungey loucheness of the 1970s vibrating through the warm palette of gradient hues of amber and orange, the inviting and tactilely rich materials and statement furniture in curved, organic shapes. “I like the fun of the 1970s; they knew how to party,” Toro admits.
Since establishing his firm in 2019, Toro has emerged as one of France’s most promising young creatives. He is both protean and prolific, a trained architect and interior designer and now, following a foray into painting, a visual artist. He has two upcoming art exhibitions in Paris: one opening later this month at the Mexican Embassy, and another at the Institut Culturel du Mexique in the Marais district in mid-February.
Toro’s artworks—large, expressive canvases layered with brushstrokes of intense color—are very separate from his architectural work, but they share a common thread. His interior projects are also richly textural, and he creates transitions and rhythm by layering materials with a warm and enveloping color palette—sun-drenched and sepia-hued. Born to a French father and a Mexican mother, dreamlike memories of his mother’s birthplace permeate his work.
Several of Toro’s most recent paintings adorn the walls of this residence. A sizable canvas hangs in the ground-floor family room, which is also fitted with a plush caramel velvet sofa of Toro’s design, a pair of Michel Cadestin’s cocooning Yoga chairs, and a round glass coffee table with imposing aluminum feet from Galerie Gram. An arcade game and foosball table sit in one corner. While the volumes are noble and grandiose, comfort pervades; this is a family home.
Up the majestic central spiral staircase, lit by a seven-meter-long Murano glass chandelier Toro designed, you arrive in the main living room, where a bespoke low-lying curved sofa snakes through the center, framed by a hand-tufted circular rug. “I wanted the eye to travel around the room,” he says of the layout. A carved mahogany 1970s Brazilian bar set bookends one side of the space; a fireplace with custom ceramic tiles in a soft patinated green and an aluminum frame sits at the other end. Accents of aluminum recur throughout the home, employed for the doors, door frames, and cabinetry to delineate volumes and add modern polish and contrast against the warmth of the wood paneling.
The cinematic atmosphere continues upstairs on the second floor in the primary bedroom, where Toro has installed a lush platform bed with two raised steps leading up to the mattress—he talks about creating a transitional moment for bedtime. “This is from my dreams,” he laughs of the bed. The layout mingles symmetry with intriguing organic elements: a plush carpet with water-like motifs guides the transition from the bedroom to the dressing room. The twin doors flanking both sides of the bed lead to a bath fitted with a swirling green onyx marble washbasin and tub.
Every element of the home is designed to immerse and inspire. “It was essential to create something warm that invites use from morning until night, in both summer and winter, taking into account the family’s moods and passions…to introduce surprise and moments of togetherness through the layout, volumes, and light,” Toro says, adding: “Creating a nice image is easy, but making an interesting space that people live in and interact with is something very different.”