Betyle Mixes a Century of Design in Marseille Without Freezing Any of It in Time.

Nostalgia in interiors usually goes one of two ways. Either a home gets frozen in a single decade, every surface dutifully matched to the same year, or the past is treated as a mood board to be copied wholesale. Le Figuier, a home in Marseille’s 8th arrondissement by local studio Betyle, does neither. It gathers almost a century of design and lets each piece keep its own date. I love it for exactly that reason.

Betyle was founded in Marseille in 2025 by Carla Romano and Nicolas Cazenave de la Roche. The pair begin every project with a close reading of what’s already there—the history of a building, its architectural details, the way light moves through it. Archival research, a careful exploration of materials and an ongoing dialogue with local craftspeople shape the work from there, right down to furniture conceived in close relation to the architecture.

Mouthwash Studio’s LA Office Proves Workspaces Can Feel Like Home.

Mouthwash Studio's LA office breaks every conventional workspace rule—and we're absolutely here for it.

At Le Figuier, that same rigour carries through to the objects. A hammered copper and silk-fringed Art Deco desk lamp by Hendrik Methorst, made around 1935, shares the home with Marco de Gueltzl’s sculpted, sandblasted glass chandelier from around 1990. Enzo Mari’s pâte de verre bowl for Daum sits in the mix alongside a pine and metal armchair by Heinz Witthoeft and an anonymous inox and glass desk from the 1980s.

Two Artemide pieces—Steve Lombardi’s 1980 aluminium and textile wall lights and Masayuki Kurokawa’s cast aluminium Lavinia lamp—sharpen things up, while a Garouste & Bonetti resin catchall, a stoneware vase by Luc Rolland and Alicia Zaton’s glazed ceramic Oeil Oki keep it tactile.

Then there’s the new work. The Kasbah Brown clay wall light by Houda x Memòri and Betyle’s own Boscaina lamp, a 2025 design in stainless steel and resin, slot in without any fuss. That’s the trick. Nothing is pretending to be old, and nothing is shouting about being new. The references are chosen for material and form rather than matching dates, and the result feels entirely of now.

For a studio founded only last year, Betyle is busy. Recent work includes the Arcane 17 restaurant in Paris and a series of stores for leather goods brand Léo et Violette, with several residential projects underway across the South of France and new furniture on the way. A talent to keep a close eye on.

Interior Designer's 1930s Madrid Villa Rebuilt as an Exquisite Corpse.

What lands hardest is the discipline beneath the exuberance: every colour, texture and reference calibrated rather than piled on.

[Images courtesy of Betyle. Photography by Axel Aurejac and Mathilde Hiley.]