Interior designer Olena Yudina used a monochrome colour palette for the redesign of this apartment in Kiev, adding glazed brick walls to every room and a recurring bird motif to bring the owners good luck (+ slideshow).
Olena Yudina remodelled the interior of an apartment in a multi-storey residential complex to create the home for her friend’s young family.
White masonry with contrasting dark grouting provides a consistent element throughout the interior, which has a minimal colour palette of white, black, grey tones and warm wood.
Yudina told Dezeen that the birds, which appear in a sculpture, on cushions and as suspended decorations, were included because she believes that “birds bring luck and a feeling of freedom”.
The apartment is divided into private and guest areas, with the bathroom, dressing room, a laundry room and a spare bedroom located off a small corridor.
The rest of the interior is arranged as an interconnected series of rooms that maximises the available space by avoiding the need for further hallways.
Additional glazing between the living room and two balconies was installed in place of solid walls to increase the amount of daylight reaching the interior.
Tall radiators in a graphite grey contrast with the white walls they’re mounted on, helping to enhance the height of the living area.
Wood was used for flooring, furniture and fitted cabinetry to add colour and texture to the simple scheme, while pot plants in the living room provide a natural element with a green accent.
Much of the furniture is freestanding to avoid reducing the available floor and wall space of the rooms. “Though this furniture looks more massive, at the same time it is roomier and gives more usable space to store things,” said Yudina.
The bathroom is entirely clad in grey stone tiles with black details such as the window frame, sink unit structure and a suspended towel rail complementing the taps and bath fittings.
From the entrance, apartment divided into two parts: private and guest. In a small corridor are symmetrically situated auxiliary rooms: guest bathroom (closer to the living room), extra dressing room (closer to the bedroom) and compact laundry.
Rest of the space was set aside for the residential room: living room, cabinet, bedroom with dressing and another bathroom. Rooms in an apartment arranged in a circle, one room passes into another; thereby we have avoided lots of small corridors, and living room can be extended by the space of cabinet. We dismantled walls of two balconies and glazed them to make more space and to bring more light to the rooms.
The monochrome range of the apartment – this is on what you firstly pay attention, and perhaps, wins over by its evenness and emphasis this apartment. The main colors we used in interior are black, perfect white, gradation of grey and rare speckles of green – wooden texture looks great in such an environment (variation on the theme of eco).
Fragmentary, there is brickwork in every room, which can be controversial as an idea, but in whole it connects all the rooms in one space. Also we made graphite radiators on the white background – looks very effective, by such contrasting verticals we wanted visually to extend the space, for the same reason we have overstated doorways. The furniture is minimized and looks extremely simple.
The apartment looks very clean, restrained and minimalistic, there are not lots of details, but it still not rid of them – everything is pertinently. Together with foreign furniture manufactures there are represented Ukrainian brands: Zuccheti/KOS, Meridiani, Arbonia, La Lampe Gras, Odesd2 (Kiev), LoveMosaic (Kiev), SwetaYaremko(Kiev), Gizmo(Lviv).
Home rental website Airbnb has opened an office in Dublin with a reception area modelled on an Irish pub designed by local architects Heneghan Peng (+ slideshow).
The architects designed a horseshoe-shaped bar in dark wood to mimic the interior of traditional pubs found across the city.
The bar is complete with bottles around the top, candelabras at both ends and a suit of armour that is posed to be having a drink between the stools.
Tables and chairs in the adjacent presentation space are also modelled on typical pub furniture, and the ceiling and flooring echo the decor of drinking venues from different eras.
Continuing the local theme, a pair of green and beige Irish telephone boxes form booths for private phone calls.
Heneghan Peng also included the 12-metre-long bench it designed for Ireland’s Venice Biennale pavilion in 2012, which dips and rises as users sit on different sections.
Throughout the office are a series of meeting pods made from oriented strand board, with interiors designed to look like apartments listed on Airbnb from cities across the world.
These rooms are glazed on opposite walls and the name of the city that the design is based upon is written on the side.
Some have seating set into the outside walls for employees to sit and chat in, designed to look like different spaces from the same apartment.
Other larger pods are hinged at the centre so they can be rolled apart to split them into two meeting rooms.
Giant wooden steps are scattered with cushions to create an informal meeting area or workspace.
More than 50 artists, designers and makers were enlisted to help design the eclectic interior of this hotel in Canberra, overseen by Fender Katsalidis Architects and Suppose Design Office (+ slideshow).
The space combines a stripped-back aesthetic, local raw materials and quirky additions including brass lighting and eucalyptus strand board to create what the hotel describes as a “quintessentially Australian vernacular”.
Nestled inside the Nishi buildings in New Acton, Canberra’s arts and culture precinct, the exterior is an irregular series of polygons giving the building an undulating shape.
The hotel’s grand staircase made from recycled timber welcomes visitors into the living-room-style hotel foyer, which has been called Main Street.
The reception desk is made from interconnected beams that continue up the walls and onto the ceiling. Two small spot lights and a low-hanging brass orb create an atmospheric space, which features studded metal walls and a tessellated mirror facing customers.
The wood theme continues into the library, which has been stocked by local press publisher Perimeter Books and holds titles on art, architecture and design.
The ground floor bar and lounge is dominated by a perforated concrete ceiling that allows pockets of light to illuminate the pale wooden floors below.
Designer Anna-Wili Highfield created the hotel’s brass Moth and Owl chandeliers based on the migration paths of local fauna in and around Canberra.
Continuing onto the lounge, the space features large, multi-coloured, irregular shaped desks designer Charles Wilson calls feasting tables.
Just off from the lobby is a huge open fireplace bracketed by overhanging concrete slabs. The material continues throughout the space providing areas for seating that have been filled with grey leather seats.
The rooms meanwhile, curated by Hotel Hotel founder Nectar Efkarpidis and aesthetic curator Don Cameron, are an re-imagination of the Australian shack.
The walls have been rendered in clay and feature natural fibre wallpapers to create a colour palette of cool greys.
In contrast, salvaged oak beds covered in brightly coloured throws are coupled with headboards made from reclaimed timber and vintage leather couches.
Adorning the walls are original artworks from a wide range of local and international contemporary artists, plus objects collected over ten years by members of the team.
A wooden pod resembling the woven structure of a bird’s nest can be used for meetings at this sales office for a property development in Mumbai by local firm Planet 3 Studios (+ slideshow).
Planet 3 Studios was asked to create a sales area for the Baya Park development in central Mumbai and suggested incorporating it into the building’s lobby.
The designers produced a space that meets the practical requirements of a public reception while providing private meeting spaces, including a nest-like structure influenced by the birds after which the client company is named.
“Baya weaver birds make exquisitely complex nests and the brand name and identity borrow from iconographic imagery that is associated with the birds,” said the designers. “Our key idea was to build a sculptural, dynamic, fluid form that evokes the Baya nest in an outscaled way.”
The nest is constructed from a curving frame of plywood ribs that narrows as it nears the ceiling and is clad in strips of pine salvaged from inside shipping containers.
Its organic form provides a sculptural presence in the lobby, while the woven surface lets daylight from the adjacent windows filter into the interior.
Other references to nature featured in the interior design include a living wall of plants behind the reception desk that reinforces the client’s organic branding.
A green back-painted glass wall in a separate meeting room continues the natural motif, and complements dark walnut panelling that is used on nearby walls.
The Baya bird logo appears as transfers on windows, which are also used to create a pattern of leaves on the glass behind the nest.
Photography is by Mrigank Sharma (India Sutra).
Here’s some more information from the designers:
BAYA PARK, Mumbai
The sales office for a project is in a sense is a theatrical staging area, informing customers about the brand and what it stands for. The spatial realm in such a case has less to do with the transactional nature of a sale and more with communication in three dimensions to successfully engage, delight and inform. As the only available construct for the customer to validate promise of quality, the space has to hold high standards in design and construction. With customer delight and thoughtful design as expressed mottos, ‘Baya Park’ as the first project of a young developer will be the proof of the concept. Our mandate amongst other things was to design the sales office and we suggested siting it within the building itself. The lobby with generous ceiling height, easy accessibility from outside and required floor area seemed a natural choice. For the developer, the finished interior space usable as the building lobby meant less sunk costs in a temporary installation.
Baya weaver birds make exquisitely complex nests and the brand name and identity borrow from iconographic imagery that is associated with the birds. Our key idea was to build a sculptural, dynamic, fluid form that evokes the Baya nest in an outscaled way. As a room on the floor plan, it serves the programmatic requirement of meeting space but transcends that by becoming an iconic object that reiterates the brand identity in a compelling fashion. The voluptuous form uses the advantage of a fairly empty floorplan and 15′ ceiling height to turn and twist in a way that makes it visually interesting from all around. Constructed out of plywood ribs and recycled pine wood strips repurposed from packing inside shipping containers, this construct allows for light to filter inside creating an interesting play and visual connect with outside.
A live green wall as the backdrop for the reception area reiterates the biophillic nature of the development, offering a small live patch as conversation starter for the larger park to come up within the building. The logo colours are rendered in backpainted glass as cladding and layered panelling in smoked walnut veneer complements the green, cladding large areas leading up to enclosed meeting room. Mid century modern pieces of furniture, solid surface acrylic reception desk, identity makers on building glass… all come together to complete the look. Clean, contemporary and yet mildly whimsical… much like the project and the developer.
Interview: Clive Wilkinson, the architect behind the office design at Google‘s Silicon Valley headquarters, tells us how he convinced the internet giant to move away from “humiliating, disenfranchising and isolating” workers’ cubicles (+ transcript).
Speaking to Dezeen during this year’s Design Indaba event in Cape Town, Wilkinson recounted how he and his team had to persuade the tech company to switch from a typical cubicle layout to a more transparent workspace when the firm first worked on offices for Google in 2005.
“We had to do quite a bit of convincing to make the founders move away from their cubicle model,” he said. “We managed to turn all of their enclosed rooms into glass rooms.”
Clive Wilkinson Archtect’s Googleplex offices in Silicon Valley, 2005. Also main image
Wilkinson said that California is still home to the most exciting office interiors right now, because tech companies like Apple, Twitter and Airbnb are “phenomenally rich”, but that there’s still room for more workspace innovation there.
“The San Francisco and Silicon Valley area of America is a massive test bed of new working but it’s not completely radical yet,” he said.
However, Wilkinson believes that more American companies need to catch on to the way these firms design their workspaces, as the majority of them are still using the cubicle offices he detests.
“I’d say 75 to 80 percent of America is cubicle land,” he said. “Cubicles are the worst – like chicken farming. They are humiliating, disenfranchising and isolating. So many American corporations still have them.”
Googleplex offices in Silicon Valley, 2005
He contrasts these American firms with Australian corporations, like the Macquarie investment bank he designed the One Shelley Street offices in Sydney for in 2009. He claims their smaller size makes them more conscious about the quality of workspaces for employees.
“American businesses are very conservative and issues of real estate don’t tend to get the attention of the CEO,” Wilkinson explained. “Conversely in Australia, where corporations are not that big, real estate does get the attention of the CEOs. They are mindful of the massive impact that an environment can have on productivity and effectiveness of the company and are prepared to take it pretty seriously.”
Googleplex offices in Silicon Valley, 2005
Wilkinson said that he enjoys designing interiors because they have more effect on the users than a building’s exterior.
“In our design practice we are fundamentally trying to address psychological issues,” Wilkinson told Dezeen. “One of the reasons I really like workplaces and interiors is that the impact on humanity is much more powerful than dealing with inert architectural shells, or the decorative outside dress of a building – which frankly is what most architects do.”
Googleplex offices in Silicon Valley, 2005
He went on to describe the current rift between external and internal design, which arises because a building’s use is often unknown or subject to change while it’s being designed, so the interior isn’t considered until later on.
“The content in the interiors of buildings has become banal,” he asserted. “Interiors have become the element of human culture than you insert into the inert box of architecture.”
“There’s a notion that you can’t build big buildings for owners who have highly specific needs because needs change and therefore that building will be compromised by its specificity,” he added. “So architects are placed in a market of building shells.”
Read the full transcript of the interview below:
Claire Thomas: What are you working on right now?
Clive Wilkinson: The BMW Campus masterplan in Munich is the most fascinating because we aren’t know for urban design. It’s a huge honour and incredibly weird that we’ve been invited to enter an urban design competition with massive car parks and buildings and traffic – we’re not known for that at all. Fortunately I have some background in that before I got pigeonholed as an interiors guy. When I worked in London we did work on urban design scale projects back in the 1980s.
One Shelley Street offices for Macquarie, 2009
Claire Thomas: You trained as an architect. What got you interested particularly in inside spaces?
Clive Wilkinson: Life’s a series of forked paths and you make choices without knowing what the ramifications are. When I got out of high school I wanted to write poetry – seriously, that was my life ambition. I wanted to go and do a literature course at Cambridge in England but my parents couldn’t afford to send me so I ended up going to architecture school here, because my sister was in architecture school.
I’d heard all about the first year course, which was a real Bauhaus course, where you didn’t actually design any buildings you did all these conceptual things like points and lines and space and sculptures. I thought it was mind liberating. I went into it not caring whether I passed or failed, and as a result I did better than anyone else because I was able to experiment and play, and not think about what the teachers wanted but do what interested me.
One Shelley Street offices for Macquarie, 2009
Claire Thomas: Is fearlessness also something you aim to bring out of people who use your workspace designs?
Clive Wilkinson: I think there’s far too much fear in the world. Fear makes people sad and reluctant to do things, and it puts them mentally on a path of waiting for things to happen to them. In our design practice we are fundamentally trying to address psychological issues. One of the reasons I really like workplaces and interiors is that the impact on humanity is much more powerful than dealing with inert architectural shells, or the decorative outside dress of a building – which frankly is what most architects do. They don’t really think about the insides any more; they’re not asked to think about the insides any more because the content in the interiors of buildings has become banal. Interiors have become the element of human culture than you insert into the inert box of architecture.
Claire Thomas: What’s behind this inertia?
Clive Wilkinson: It’s driven by money. It’s driven by developers and by the economics of cities. And you can’t blame architects for that at all, it’s market-based. There’s a notion that you can’t build big buildings for owners who have highly specific needs because needs change and therefore that building will be compromised by its specificity. So architects are placed in a market of building shells. That’s very different to two hundred years ago when people could build gorgeous buildings that were highly specific but also very flexible.
One Shelley Street offices for Macquarie, 2009
Claire Thomas: What is wrong with workspaces today?
Clive Wilkinson: There’s an unfortunate dilemma that has occurred in the marketplace where people feel disconnected. Our clients are asking us to do things that are not healthy at all, part of a fear-based reaction to the alienating and disenfranchising accept of large corporate offices.
Claire Thomas: What’s the worst example you’ve seen of that?
Clive Wilkinson: I don’t think many people build bad examples any more, the general trend is to open up the workspace and increase accessibility and transparency, and choice and opportunity.
Claire Thomas: Lots of people still work in old un-refurbished offices.
Clive Wilkinson: Cubicles are the worst – like chicken farming. They are humiliating, disenfranchising and isolating. So many American corporations still have them. I’d say 75-80 percent of America is cubicle land. They still want six-feet-high panels around cubicles and I fight clients on this subject constantly because it is so stupid.
One Shelley Street offices for Macquarie, 2009
Claire Thomas: Who has horrible cubicles? Give us some names!
Clive Wilkinson: Google was cubicle land when we started working with them. We worked on the original Googleplex work space. We had to do quite a bit of convincing to make the founders move away from their cubicle model. We managed to turn all of their enclosed rooms into glass rooms. That led us to this interesting tent roof system that we used throughout their offices.
Claire Thomas: What’s your view on glass as a material in offices? Everyone is glass crazy now but don’t you want privacy at times when working?
Clive Wilkinson: We’ve had to walk the talk with what we do. I think there are simple behaviour changes that people need to go through to adapt to glass. I don’t have any issue with being seen all the time. We built our own offices in LA and all our meeting room front walls are glass. I work on the same type of desk that every one else works on so everyone is connected in the same way as the very large desk we designed.
One Shelley Street offices for Macquarie, 2009
Claire Thomas: Open-plan, modular workspace with lots of glass seems to be the current accepted way to work. Where’s office design going next?
Clive Wilkinson: Workplace culture can be supported in a very sophisticated way by work tools, and work settings that are customised to different kinds of work – both individual and collaborative. That’s the future. It’s not sunk home in America yet because American businesses are very conservative and issues of real estate don’t tend to get the attention of the CEO. Conversely in Australia, where corporations are not that big, real estate does get the attention of the CEOs. They are mindful of the massive impact that an environment can have on productivity and effectiveness of the company and are prepared to take it pretty seriously.
What we did with Macquarie investment bank in 2009, using ABW, that’s Activity Based Working, a highly supported way of mobile working, I was told by Macquarie people a year ago that pretty much every other major bank in Australia had picked up this way of working because it made sense to give people choice and liberating them from paper, and reducing carbon footprint. We might as well be in the future now.
One Shelley Street offices for Macquarie, 2009
Claire Thomas: People are working form home more and using Skype and the web to connect. How long before offices are dead?
Clive Wilkinson: Truth is, we’re not as virtually well connected as we think. The amount of information that’s conveyed by looking people in the face and seeing their body language and seeing their eyes in person, hearing the tone of their voice and the subtleties of the communication, is enormous. By using something like Skype, the quantity of that information is reduced exponentially. You get 15 percent of the depth of that information. So coming face-to-face is never going to go away unless virtual devices take us there. But I don’t think they will. You can’t smell someone form across the street, you can’t feel the space they’re in, it might be colder where they are, you might misinterpret each other.
Claire Thomas: Which part of the world gets it right when it comes to using design to help people work better?
Clive Wilkinson: The San Francisco to Silicon Valley area of America is a massive test bed of new working but it’s not completely radical yet. They still haven’t gone completely mobile yet. The companies in that area are just phenomenally rich. Google, Apple, Yahoo and a stream of others – Airbnb, Skype, Twitter.
Claire Thomas: What do they all do right?
Clive Wilkinson: They all have to attract the same talent. One of the biggest motivators for creating good workspaces is being attractive to people you want to hire. There’s a the amount of effort and energy being put into that. We’re not involved but there’s a huge amount of creative workspace being churned out.
A spiral of wooden strips surrounds a staircase in the restaurant of this Strasbourg hotel, designed inside a former equestrian academy by Paris studio Jouin Manku (+ slideshow).
Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku of Jouin Manku overhauled the eighteenth-century building that previously functioned as the royal stud to create the 55-room Les Haras de Strasbourg hotel and adjoining restaurant.
“The interior design for the hotel and brasserie is characterised by its authenticity and modernity,” said the designers. “A particular idea of luxury and comfort inspired by the equestrian world, restrained and subtle.”
Oak elements encircle the curving staircase linking the two floors of the brasserie, forming handrails on one side and a balustrade round the top of the void.
The staircase sits between a circular bar and open kitchen at the entrance level, where informal seating and a few dining table are located.
The timber elements extend from the spiral across a wine rack along the back wall.
Upstairs, guests dine beneath the original wooden roof supported by chunky beams and columns.
Private booths are created within pods and large curved seats covered in saddle leather, while long tables extend down the length of the space to accommodate larger parties.
Stonework around the windows has been left exposed and the walls are finished with rough plaster.
The wood structure is also highlighted in the simple bedrooms, which are painted white and decorated with leather details on the headboards and furniture.
Horse graphics in the reception hint at the building’s original use.
Here’s some extra information from the studio:
Les Haras de Strasbourg
Les Haras de Strasbourg is a hotel and restaurant project unlike any other.
Composed of a the four-star hotel and Michelin 3-starred chef Marc Haeberlin’s first brasserie, Les Haras presents an original solution to the question many provincial cities are facing: how to redevelop and harness the potential of their architectural heritage.
Managed by the Institute for Research into Cancer of the Digestive System (IRCAD), presided over by Professor Jacques Marescaux, the project allies architectural creativity and technological innovation, two particular areas of French expertise, with philanthropy, an unprecedented mix for a historic redevelopment project in France.
As conceived by Agence Jouin Manku, the interior design for the hotel and brasserie is characterised by its authenticity and modernity, a particular idea of luxury and comfort inspired by the equestrian world, restrained and subtle.
Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku have expressed their vision of this former stud farm and historic site, in a design that is both elegant and simple.
They have deliberately chosen to limit the range of materials used; solid wood, natural full hide leather and blackened or brushed metal to transpose the original life of this emblematic Strasbourg building into something resolutely contemporary and simple, whose architectural details attest to the studio’s creativity.
Slovenian firm Studio 360 built walls of modular white shelving inside every room of this L-shaped apartment in Ljubljana to maximise space whilst removing clutter (+ slideshow).
Studio 360 renovated a 100-square-metre apartment in the heart of the Slovenian capital to create the modern home, which contains a large living and dining room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a study.
The designers didn’t make any changes to the layout of the apartment, but gave each room a different arrangement of shelving based on simple geometric shapes. This inspired the project’s name, Geometric Residence.
The studio also made small structural adjustments by changing windows and doors, replacing the flooring and rewiring the electrics.
“When the client approached us, this apartment was vacant and ruined,” explained studio director Lidija Dragisic. “In order to bring it back to life, the renovation was absolutely necessary.”
The interior combines basic materials and natural colours, with white walls, oak furniture and detail accents in black. “This approach allowed the residents the freedom of doing any additional decorations without disrupting the overall design statement,” said Dragisic.
Entering the space, the apartment opens onto the open-plan living room, accessed by walking under a strip of mirrored glass.
The lounge area is dominated by block white shelving, with gaps made of oak deliberately inserted to allow the addition of books, a TV and speakers.
In contrast, the adjacent kitchen features uniform white units, which surround a custom-made 3.5-metre wooden table with a parquet finish.
In the master bedroom, oak storage units are suspended from the wall above a bed made from the same wood. Both this room and the second bedroom feature full-height white wardrobes.
Sandwiched between the two bedrooms is a small study with shelving divided into squares and rectangles.
The two main bathrooms are finished in slate grey tiling and feature mirror-lined walls and white inlet shelving.
The apartment is located in the heart of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It is divided into living area (consisting of a large living room with kitchen and dining room) and more intimate / sleeping area (two sleeping rooms and a study room). In between these two spaces there is a service part offering two contemporary bathrooms and one utility.
When the client approached us, this apartment was vacant and ruined. In order to bring it back to life, the renovation was absolutely necessary. The adaptation didn’t make any significant changes to the floor plan, besides some bathroom enhancements, windows & door replacements, new flooring and electrical installations.The interior furnishing design is simple, with design-scheme combining basic materials and natural colours: oak, white furniture and some detail accents in black. This approach allowed the residents the freedom of doing any additional decorations (art, coloured cushions, carpets, accessories etc.) without disrupting the overall design-statement.
The furniture along the walls is in a neutral white and designed in a geometrical pattern, which magnifies the flat’s ambience. Several carefully selected accents are wood, which create a pleasant and cozy atmosphere. The furniture is custom and unique – for example, a big 3.5 m long wooden table in the middle of the dining area or a huge pantry with parquet-finish, which brings the living and private spaces together. The marriage of white and oak is implemented in the master bedroom as well (master-bed and a geometrically-shaped wall closet above). The massive curtains throughout the apartment achieve additional intimacy, softness and consistency (they are also in a neutral black & white combination). The bathrooms are simple and without any unnecessary decorations, which allows the beautiful concrete-like tiles to stand out. These spaces are visually enhanced with the clever use of built-in mirrored walls.
Our aim was to adapt this interior to the versatile, ever changing needs of the modern customer. Besides the functionality, we wanted to create many different lighting scenarios and environments. This is achieved by combining basic lighting with the indirect led lighting, which are hidden in the furniture elements. The ceiling in the bedroom adorned with a crystal chandelier, which (along with the other vintage accessories) gives this residence a unique soul.
This Berlin townhouse by architecture office XTH-Berlin features doors that open like drawbridges, sloping floors that function as slides and nets that cover holes in the floors (+ slideshow).
XTH-Berlin inserted staggered floors throughout the building’s 12-metre height to accommodate various living spaces, with bedrooms housed in slanted concrete volumes at the first and third levels featuring flaps that can be used to slide from one level to the next.
The house’s entrance contains wardrobes, a bathroom and a spare room that can be hidden by drawing a full-height curtain, while a gap in the ceiling provides a view of the zigzagging levels that ascend to the top of the house.
Two concrete-walled bedrooms situated above the ground floor feature sloping wooden flaps that can be raised to connect these rooms with a platform where the piano sits.
A gap in this platform level allows light and views between the storeys and is covered in netting to create a safe play area.
A staircase leads past the two bedrooms to a living room containing a bathroom that can be cordoned off using a curtain.
The third bedroom is connected to this living area by a gently sloping wooden bridge, while another flight of stairs leads to a reading platform.
A final set of stairs continues to the top floor kitchen and dining room, which opens onto a large terrace.
This open-plan level features a skylight that adds to the natural light entering the space through the full-height glazing.
A minimal palette of materials is used throughout the interior, including concrete, pinewood flooring, steel railings and laminated spruce used for dividing walls, stairs and doors.
The house is located beside a park marking the site of the former Berlin Wall. Entrances on either side of the property lead to a multipurpose space for storing bikes, clothes and shoes.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Townhouse B14
The house is all about space and light.
Developed by the section it has a continuous space stretching out over the total height (12 mts), length and width of the building: from entrance hall and playing area to a music level to a living room with an open bath to a reading area to the kitchen with terrace.
This open space is zoned by two concrete elements ‘hung’ between the firewalls. They contain the private (bed) rooms. Due to their slants views are possible through the entire house.
Only few materials determine the interior space: fair faced concrete for the solids, plaster for the firewalls, glued-laminated spruce for dividing walls, stairs and doors, and pinewood planks for the floors, besides steel for the railings, glass for the facades and fringes for filtering views and light. Interiors like the shelves and trunks are designed by us.
According to the site along the former wall – the no-man’s land between East and West – now the Berlin Wall Memorial, the house has a severe outside contrasting the coloured balcony houses opposite in the former West.
The house is built on a trapezoid lot of land of 118 m2 with a small garden in the southeast towards a residential path and the wide side of the house to the northwest facing the plain of the Berlin Wall Memorial which is mainly a park. It’s part of a settlement of 16 townhouses, the two neighbouring houses are by XTH-berlin as well.
The nearly all-over glazed facades are structured by steel girders, which span from one dividing wall to the other and take over the cross bracing. Two lines of fringy draperies in front of the ground and second floor provide screen and cover the window frames.
Technically we use a heat pump (pipes going 80 mts into the ground) with panel heating and rainwater tanks in the garden for use in the toilets.
You enter the house from both sides: From the north beneath the concrete solid in an area with wardrobe, bathroom and the building services room. From the south directly in the living space which opens to the very top of the building. This is the level to put the bikes, do handicrafts, play kicker, a spare room and a storage room can be separated by a curtain.
The stairway leading up crosses the first concrete element with two sleeping rooms inside. Few steps up you reach the music area, a gallery with a horizontal net as a fall protection.
The two sleeping rooms can be opened to this area by the use of 2,5m x 1,5m big elevating flaps (which besides to slide and play are used to ventilate the sleeping rooms to the quiet side of the house). Further up you are on top of the first concrete element: Here you find the classic living space with sofa and oven, but also a bathroom included, to partition by curtain.
Via a bridge you enter the second concrete element, containing another sleeping room. The sloped wall is becoming a huge pillow.
Continuing your way up you come to an intermediate level, which is mostly used as a reading area, looking back down you view the small garden on the back side of the house and the memorial park in front.
Another stairway and you reach the highest level on top of the second concrete element: kitchen and dining area, opening to a terrace. A huge roof light (through which the stack-effect ventilates the to a maximum glazed house) lets the midday sun shine deep down on the lower levels.
A crimped wooden screen with a triangular hole through its centre divides the spaces of this beauty salon in Osaka by Japanese designer Yusuke Seki (+ slideshow).
Yusuke Seki used a simple palette of wood and white paint to make the interior of the Kolmio+LIM salon reflect colours of natural skin tones, then added a selection of pastel colours reminiscent of nail polish.
“We designed the zigzag wall in white to represent the basic skin tone,” Seki told Dezeen. “Through shadow and light it creates more definition.”
The crimped wooden screen cuts the space into two sections, but also folds around a corner to line the edge of a sidewall. “The zigzag wall catches the natural light and evokes differences, like the skin and nail tone does,” added Seki.
A blue-painted feature wall provides a backdrop for the reception area, which features small wooden seats made from tree trunks and a wooden bookshelf.
This space opens into a main room with six wooden tables for nail treatments and two reclining chairs positioned off to the side for pedicure treatments.
Customers have to step through the triangular hole of the crimped wooden screen to access the beauty treatment area at the rear of salon.
Eyelash treatment chairs are separated by shimmering gold curtains that are partially transparent, while a pale pink feature wall with additional mirrors creates an extra seating area.
The pastel colours chosen for the walls reference coloured buildings in the surrounding neighbourhood, while a linear grid of wooden blocks creates a parquet floor.
The Nail Salon is designed with iconic triangle division as it reflected the meaning of “Kolmio”.
“Kolmio+LIM” is a nail salon located in Osaka, the western capital of Japan, which is where our client LIM started her first hair salon. They have since expanded their beauty business. “Kolmio” is taken from the name (kolmio+LIM) the Nail Salon means triangle in Finish.
The store layout of basic wood and white has been designed to reflect the essential colour of natural skin tones, and the space itself is intended to symbolise the process of nail colouring. The zigzag wall and natural lighting refraction make references to the twinkle glitter reflection of nail polish, and the colour themes of the design represent the various layers of nail polish applied one after another.
Yusuke based the design, of various tones of white, upon basic natural human nail colours. He tried to express the Japanese proverb “Diverse men, diverse minds”, which directly translates as ‘ten people have ten different colour’; as every person has their own skin colour as a base for colouring, to bring a new personality by adding layer upon layer of beauty work requires precision by the nailist.
The coloured walls take their inspiration from the neighbourhood buildings just outside the window, as a way of incorporating the surrounding aesthetics, as part of an overall interior design theme. “Kolmio” is originally an intricate triangle decoration. This stores’ dynamic shapes are inspired by kolnio and possess an iconic value, as well as providing a functional division through the centre of the space. All of the design methods are inspired by there environment, and the actions all happened surroundings.
London studio PATALAB Architecture made the most of the space inside this awkward-shaped residence in the north of the city by running a staircase along the entire rear wall and adding a door that folds around a corner (+ slideshow).
PATALAB Architecture inserted the two-storey apartment into the converted upper levels of a historic shop building in Hampstead Village. The team planned the interior as a series of tiers, hence the name Cascade House.
The first step in the renovation was to add an extra storey at the rear of the building. The architects then created a long route that leads directly from the entrance all the way up to this new top level, allowing it to function as both corridor and stairwell.
Skylights bring natural light into the stairwell, while inside walls are lined with pine panels that have been sand-blasted and stained black.
“This was one of our most challenging design projects in terms of creating a sense of space at a very confined site in a listed building,” said studio founder Uwe Schmidt-Hess. “By introducing the internal timber panelled staircase facade and creating a very intense spatial sequence, the apartment feels much bigger than it actually is.”
The timber staircase treads are also stained black, as are floors throughout the apartment, helping to create a sense of unity through each of the spaces.
Upon entering, the first room to arrive at is the combined living room and kitchen. The unusual door sits at one of the corners of this space, comprising two halves that concertina into the wall so that they don’t get in the way when open.
There’s also a window between this room and the stairwell to help light filter between the two spaces.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Cascade House
‘Cascade’ staircase and right-angled door boost the sense of living space at a listed building conversion in Hampstead Village, London.
Building a luxury two-bedroom apartment as an extension to the modestly sized dimensions of an existing retail premises in this Georgian building in the very heart of London’s Hampstead village, while providing occupants with a heightened sense of living space, was the design challenge for PATALAB Architecture.
The Grade II listed building, on the corner of Hampstead High Street and Perrin’s Court, consists of three storeys of floor space. The rear of the building extends to two floors. The design solution for creating a two-storey dwelling and giving it a feeling of enhanced space was to create a new mansard-roofed third storey at the rear of the building. This has maximised the headroom in the new living room/kitchen area inside while minimising visual mass externally, thereby satisfying the listed building requirements of the local planning authority.
A new access staircase for the apartment runs for most of the building’s depth, at the back of the new accommodation, adding to the sense of space. There is a short, right angled turn at the foot of it, leading to the street entrance door. The visual effect of the continuous fall of black-stained timber staircase treads, together with the double storey living space, has given the new dwelling its name, Cascade House.
The staircase is well lit by roof skylights and has a grain textured facade of pine panels one side of it which has been sandblasted to enhance the surface texture and stained black to increase the graphic effect. This gives an impressive, continuous, feature-like quality to the entrance space.
The sense of space has been further enhanced by the creation of a right-angled entrance door to the living room/kitchen area, an unique design feature. An internal window in the living room wall provides extra daylight exposure to the stairwell, as well as providing a double light aspect to the living space.
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