Inside Arik Levy and Zoé Ouvrier’s artistic idyll on the Côte d’Azur

Inside Arik Levy and Zoé Ouvrier’s artistic idyll on the Côte d’Azur

The prolific international designer and sculptor Arik Levy and his wife, the artist Zoé Ouvrier, have names, and work, that have been firmly established in Paris for decades. But it wasn’t until two years ago, when they elected to leave the city and plant themselves and their two teenage daughters in a rambling house in the deep southern French countryside, that their lives – and art – began to bear unexpected fruit.

The couple had been searching for a large enough space away from the city for some time. In the summer of 2019, they finally found what they had been looking for: an estate on the Côte d’Azur that had been the hideaway of the ballet dancer Sylvie Guillem. Equidistant from the Préalpes d’Azur hiking trails and the sea, the two-storey house is surrounded by 1.2 acres of terraced land, planted with olive and citrus trees and awash in Mediterranean light. Between the towering cypresses are glimpses of the nearby medieval historic centre of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, one of the oldest towns on the French Riviera.

“I don’t know why we didn’t do this sooner,” says Levy. He is sitting in the house’s winter garden, at a table of his own making: the tabletop, which he designed