How a “killed” interior was turned into an ideal multifunctional living space. See before and after photos.
The three-room apartment is located in the old apartment building of I. A. Zhadimirovsky in the classicism style. For the customer, who turned to the designers from Background Studio, it was important to make the most functional apartment with a creative idea, since he himself was engaged in painting, although the main work was related to numbers. The authors of the project included Suprematism motifs in the compositions of the joinery. This is how a black square in a gray cube appeared in the kitchen. And in the living room, through an arch of cabinets, you can see a bookcase with bright red, yellow, and white geometric shapes.
In many ways, the layout is determined by the initial data of the apartment and all the conditions that must be met to approve the redevelopment. The location of wet areas was recorded and the kitchen was isolated due to the presence of gas equipment. A solid wall divides the space into two zones, so the corridor had to be preserved.
The designers tried to create the effect of one room flowing into another – wide and high ceiling openings with canvases either going into pockets or along the walls helped with this. In this way, it was possible to visually combine the space of the kitchen and living room, and turn a private block – an office, a bedroom, a dressing room – into a transformer. So, with the partition doors open, you get a large, unified dressing room. When closed there is an internal hall from which you can enter the office or bedroom.
The kitchen remained in the same place. To isolate it from the rest of the rooms, they made door panels into the ceiling, extending into the thickness of the walls. This is how the effect of transforming space was created.
It was important for the customer to preserve the atmosphere of St. Petersburg; he wanted to leave the old brick exposed. “It was required that the brick retain its liveliness and not kill the interior with its dominant red color. Its texture is present in almost every room, but through the moire of lime plaster. We came up with a coating technique: lime plaster was ground together with brick dust, and secured on top with a primer so that it would not crumble,” say the designers.
The small bathroom had to accommodate many functions: in addition to standard items, there was also an infrared cabin and a utility unit with a washing machine. The room contains a massive reinforced concrete beam, which had to be taken into account in the volumetric-spatial solution. Therefore, the result was a complex composition of both the ceiling and walls.
Photo of the apartment before renovation:
