The French designer Charlotte Biltgen’s furniture showroom is located on the ground floor of a typical Haussmannian building at the heart of Paris’s 17th arrondissement. Her home environment could hardly be more different. She wakes up many mornings to see grey herons perched outside her bedroom windows and spends most of her weekends waterskiing.
You could be forgiven for thinking that she lives in the countryside or by the sea. In fact, home is just a few hundred yards from Paris’s ring road and the nearest Metro station. She lives on a barge on the Seine, moored on the banks of the Île de Puteaux, an uninhabited island that is not only home to a natural bird reserve and listed rose garden but also numerous sporting facilities, including an Olympic-sized swimming pool, several football pitches and dozens of tennis courts.
