00:01During the renovations, we discovered the beautiful frescoes underneath paint and render.
00:08We decided to make these walls a part of the apartment's design language.
00:14I'm Jacopo Rettondini, lead architects at Archiplan Studio.
00:20The building is located in the historical city center of Mantua,
00:25in the northern Italy region of Lombardy.
00:38The apartment is 36 square meters.
00:44The building was built in 15th century and has gone through a lot of transformation since then.
00:51It used to be the apartment for the client's grand man, but now her grandson lives here.
00:59The client brief was to divide the single apartment into two apartments.
01:05We decided to knock down the wall between the original rooms created and new entrance.
01:11Then we added a bathroom, a sleeping cube and the kitchen and dining area.
01:17All of this would be built around the cube that sits in the middle of the apartment.
01:26At the entrance there is a pantry or a storage area where you can keep your keys and shoes.
01:34Just a few steps from the entrance, on the side of the wooden cube, is also an area to hang
01:41your coat.
01:43At one stage, the apartment resembled an archeological site.
01:49We discovered the beautiful frescoes underneath paint and render.
01:54The walls underneath were scored and marked with signs of different ages, like something you will see in a museum.
02:04The living room is a combined space with the kitchen and dining room.
02:11We designed and made a long oak bench to sit by the window.
02:16We decorated it with objects, but it can also be an area where you can sit.
02:23We designed a simple kitchen that sits along the wall.
02:28The materials we used were wood painted in light grey for the cabinets and the brass finish for the lower
02:35section doors.
02:37We chose to go with an induction hob that can be mounted to the wall and placed on a counter
02:44when required.
02:45This frees up much needed kitchen counter space in a small apartment.
02:51The dining area sits along the wall of the cube.
02:56There is a floating bench seat integrated into the wall which doubles as seats for the dining table.
03:04The dining table can be extended to sit up to 8 guests and the bench against the wall can also
03:11be used as additional seating.
03:13The dining table can also be used as an office desk when working from home.
03:21Given the small size of the space and the particularity of the wall surfaces, it was immediately decided to create
03:29a central element or the bedroom cube.
03:32Since the ceiling in the apartment is quite high, the cube does not go all the way to the ceiling.
03:39This helps visually by letting you see around the cube but also helps with airflow around the apartment.
03:47Inside the cube is the bedroom.
03:49A double bed sits on top of a platform which is built in storage that can be accessed at the
03:55end of the bed.
03:56There is an integrated bed head at the other end of the bed and there is access to power points
04:03of both sides.
04:05Above the bed head we built floating shelves all the way up for additional storage.
04:11We made little circular cutouts through the cube to frame the walls on the outside and added two windows to
04:19allow visual relationship with the surrounding space.
04:23At the end of the bed there is a floor to ceiling wardrobe that can be concealed by a curtain.
04:30The curtain makes for a softer division of the space and makes it easier to walk through the area.
04:39The bathroom starts just outside of the bedroom entrance.
04:44There is a square resin sink which sits on an oak bench, the same as the one in the living
04:50area.
04:52To keep things a minimal we place it all the plumbing within the base of the sink.
04:58Through a sliding door is where the rest of the bathroom is.
05:02There is a shower, a bidet and a toilet.
05:06We place it the plumbing into the wall to reduce the space needed for the toilet system.
05:14We think it's important to make custom furniture for these small spaces in order to make full use of the
05:22space and keep the design cohesive.
05:24It is also important to maintain historical aspects of the building while introducing contemporary elements.
05:32The idea is to maximize and bring character to the limited space, to create a sort of character between the
05:40space, the furniture itself and who lives there.
05:51The thing and the furniture itself is where the space and theποrauen is.
05:53The kitchen was included in all aspects, the furniture itself and those both Privilege.
05:53The Dying!
05:55The Dying!
05:56The Dying!
05:58The Dying!
05:59The Dying!
06:00The Dying!
06:00You
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