00:00I live here with my partner and my medium-sized dog. It's a 24-square-metre
00:08apartment and we seem to get along fine.
00:16Kaira Apartments, it's an art deco building completed in 1936 and designed
00:22by Best Overend with details of ocean liners and ships. I was interested in
00:28creating a suite of different spaces rather than completely clearing out
00:34walls and doors and turning it into one big space and to draw focus on the
00:39existing details of the building which I didn't want my design to compete or
00:43overtake with those more I wanted it to complement them. The kitchens are sort of
00:47merging between the toolbox and the cabinetry bench and then it sort of
00:51unfolds and opens up and everything has its place. The aesthetic and the way the
00:56kitchen is put together is to have a very simple kind of almost farm like
01:02structural system that runs through it. The materials of the kitchen driven by
01:07wanting things to be able to age and patina and develop a characteristic
01:13through use so when the kitchen is closed this the space out here completely
01:17transforms into a sort of really nice quiet space. Things in an apartment tend to
01:24be a bit more hybridised the door is also a bookshelf and a pantry and that
01:30allowed me to close the bedroom off and have a separate space. These apartments
01:35have quite generous ceiling heights so there's a crawl space underneath the bed
01:39there's room for a washing machine and there's a little sort of ladder which
01:43stores our shoes. The apartments faces north so I get a lot of fantastic light
01:49without having to rely on too much artificial lighting during the day. All of
01:54my light fittings they're hidden away in the joinery and they up light the roof so
01:58the light gets a really beautiful wash. The original design of the bathroom also
02:03included a dressing room so it's sort of a 19th century detail where there's a
02:08dressing room with a wash basin in there. I try to keep a continuity of
02:13materials throughout the whole apartment. The floor is the same in the
02:17bathroom as it is in the kitchen as it is in the bedroom and limiting those
02:21materials just means there's sort of less clutter in terms of transitions in
02:25between different rooms.
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