00:02our design concept was pretty simple we wanted to obtain bright bold and
00:09colorful interior with a lot of greenery visible from the entrance we wanted to
00:17expose secondhand furniture and we wanted to use materials that will look
00:25good for years to come my name is Karina and I'm an architect for this project I
00:32have designed with my husband we designed this apartment for my sister Kasia
00:46this apartment is located in the capital city of Poland in Warsaw this neighborhood
00:52is called Stare Bielany this is the great example of Polish post-war housing estate
01:00the scale of the buildings is very human friendly there is a lot of residential
01:05greenery in between and all basic amenities are located nearby from its
01:12beginning it was a residential building it was erected in the 60s Kasia is the second
01:20owner of the apartment she's a civil engineer by day and her hobby is
01:26working with ceramic and porcelain Kasia had three main requirements first one
01:33she loves to cook so she needed full-size kitchen not only kitchenette the second
01:40requirement was about vintage elements so we incorporated those pieces into design
01:47as well and her third requirement she's a hobbit ceramicist so she wanted to
01:54display her small collection somewhere on the wall
01:59layout of the apartment was unchanged from the 60s it was the apartment for a
02:05family of three the original plan had dark hallway narrow kitchen two separate
02:13rooms and the bathroom with the washing machine that blocked the door in our
02:20design we removed the wall between kitchen and living room we removed original
02:26bedrooms door and part of the wall to create second entrance to the bedroom we
02:32also relocated the washing machine the entrance is very central so almost the
02:40whole apartment is visible from the threshold inside this entrance zone we have
02:47designed custom-made closet made from oak vineyard panels inside this big closet who
02:54provided some space for shoes for clothes and who placed their washing machine as
03:00well to separate this entrance zone from the living room we have designed openwork
03:07structure some time ago Kasia fell in love with Alexander Calder's mobiles so it was our
03:14original inspiration at the beginning Kasia prepared a lot of sketches of her dream
03:21structure and we used those sketches the structure is pretty subtle and it
03:27doesn't look the view that was pretty important for us because this apartment is
03:30only 33 square meters in the living room we have L-shaped sofa small side table
03:37floating TV cabinet and there is the togo armchair on the floor we have oak
03:46parkette this pattern is called herringbone and it was quite popular in 60s when the
03:52building was erected kitchen is a full-size and there is a lot of space to store food to
04:00prepare food to cook to eat and to have coffee kitchen is the main furniture in the living room that's
04:09why we have designed oak vineyard fronts at the bottom and we combine those with
04:15light pink fronts at the top pink is Kasia favorite color we combine those two type of
04:24materials with the maroon worktop finishing with wooden edge on the wall we have the singular
04:33module of string shelf to expose Kasia's ceramic collection between the kitchen and living room area
04:42there's round wooden table and above this table there is a flower pot lamp we have three chairs designed
04:51in 70s by Bruno ray when Kasia bought those chairs they were painted dark brown and they
04:58were in pretty bad condition we have decided to use green stain because inside this terrazzo
05:05on the floor we have a lot of green dots you can enter the bedroom directly from the entrance or
05:14from the living room through a narrow wall opening inside the bedroom the bed is soft pink with a fancy
05:23headboard inside the bed there is a storage space and next to the bed there is wall lamp for reading
05:33the closet has both open and closed storage drawers there's some space for coat hangers and some space for books
05:44the bathrooms door is visible from the entrance so we wanted to have it as neutral as can be at
05:52the
05:53bottom of the door there is a small gap to provide air for the bathroom the bathroom is pretty compact
06:00there is toilet storage above it shower we have designed pattern of holes because behind this perforated
06:09panel heating pipe is located and we wanted to provide some heat in the bathroom especially during
06:16the winter we have designed curved vanity to move around space a little bit easier when it comes to
06:24designing small space our philosophy is pretty simple we always want to make as much storage space
06:31as possible and then we have a possibility to expose some beautiful furniture and that's great if
06:38those furniture are second-hand because there is no planet B we should build and use space as smart
06:45and efficiently as possible small apartments if designed are very good place to live
Comments