Apartment in an Art Nouveau villa

The project aimed at the reconstruction of the interior of one floor of a multi-generational Art Nouveau villa and the separation of an independent residential unit due to the need for greater privacy for a young couple. The concept of three main passage rooms was preserved, which now serve as a living kitchen, the middle room as an office with a library and two separate wardrobes. The third room within this enfilade concludes with a bedroom, from which a second bathroom with a shower is newly accessible. This originally served as a kitchenette, accessible only from the intermediate level of the staircase. The second zone of the apartment is understood and used more as a spacious work bathroom with a washing machine and a spare room for a guest or child.

An important and sensitive topic became the design of the partition wall with the entrance door, which divides the stair hall and changes its proportions. The new layer is expressive and shape-strong and architecturally complex. It works with various types of glass and mirrors, with the color of dark-stained ceiling beams, whose rhythm and distinctive drawing on the ceiling remain continuous even after the staircase is divided. The partition wall is deep and provides ample necessary storage space at the apartment entrance. Its geometry is slightly slanted and rotates the mirrored surface into the center of the landing. It becomes an object, a sculpture that confidently and simultaneously with humility towards the existing interior creates spatial tension and maintains the generosity of the hall.

A similar concept of color, material solutions, and the treatment of individual pieces of built-in furniture as authorial and artistic objects continues in other parts of the apartment. The rooms are enhanced, for example, thanks to a layer of original ceiling paintings that appeared during the realization and could be partially restored. Elsewhere, the ceilings are complemented with a new layer of paint that intertwines with atypical and distinct furniture, steel beams, or arched ceilings, thus creating different characters and moods in the individual rooms.

The wardrobe furniture is designed from stained and oiled plywood combined with stained and lacquered MDF, complemented by fragments of original furniture, drawers, etc. The furniture surfaces are combined in many nearly imperceptibly different shades and darknesses of brown and blue-green colors. The bathrooms and kitchen are materially complemented with stone and brass used in the construction of the partition wall, moldings, or as cladding on the wall by the kitchen worktop, which will gradually acquire a natural patina.