To me the building feels a bit like a cloud,
almost dream-like which is in such contrast to the hustle and bustle of the city.
My name is Liz Gardner and I am a designer at Bodega LTD and this is our project Maison Bodega.
So the building is a little bit of an anomaly, even our architect Toby and I have talked quite
a bit to identify like what its style is, it seems to be a hybrid, it has notes of
Italianate but no one can quite identify its true style which I think is perfect for even
the way that we live and work here and then also for how it sits and nests into the neighbourhood.
So we're located in Minneapolis a couple of blocks from downtown,
in a neighborhood called Loring Heights that is characterised by
historic or Heritage homes. So when you enter Maison Bodega at street level you
enter Bar Agnes which we have lovingly named after our Siberian Husky, Queen and mascot.
In our laundry room or kind of pantry extension of Bar Agnes, we have stackable laundry set and
then you can go up into the main level which includes the kitchen and what is on the original
plans as the ballroom while it's a humble one, it operates as a bit of a hybrid space for us,
it's where our team sits during the week to co-work together and it's also
where we host events, dinners, plays and other kind of public facing programming,
and then if you go up one more level you go up to the apartment, the private space where we live.
We found the building through an online listing, it was something
that I was initially immediately drawn to and then it was sold and back on the
market and I remember when it was re-listed my friend texted me and said 'your building
is back online' and so I think there's just been like a long-term draw to this place,
a bit of an obsession with it, and the idea that it was a lady that kind of hadn't been
listened to for a long time I just couldn't really resist to take on the challenge.
So the original brief of the project was a live/work space, our design from Bodega LTD
was growing, we love the idea of like living in our work, in the sense that we wanted it to be
really congruent I think that that collaborative spirit is really rooted in the idea of Bodega,
the corner store, the community space that you go to every day,
that was kind of at the core of the approach to the renovation. So in a process like this
we really wanted to honour and respect the heritage of the building, the structure,
the materials, the processes, but then we also needed to modernize it. We really grounded that
decision-making process in the idea of time being made visible and that only putting things into
the space even if they're modern that felt like they could have been there all along, or could
be a living finish and age in a way that could feel cohesive with this time that was already
present within the walls, the floors, the material story and just kind of the essence of who she is.
So when we're thinking about the requirements for a kitchen, for a live/work space we really
wanted to be able to have that commercial kind of power or space or capacity but we also knew that
we would be making our morning coffee in the space or having dinner with friends so it needed to kind
of embody a full spectrum of scales and that's why we chose to work with Fisher & Paykel. So
specifically we love the opportunity to integrate, we're working with a space that is almost entirely
stone and so we needed appliances that were able to kind of work within that constraint. Another
kind of constraint with a stone structure is you're not able to like take out walls,
you're not starting with a big open space, you have to work within even spatial constraints
and so we were looking for appliances like were powerful but also could accommodate the right
scale and I think that something like a cool drawer or even the dish drawers, they're petite
and powerful and I think that was something that was really important for the size and scale of our
kitchen. Because of the sort of hybrid use of the space we knew we wanted to have cool drawers in
the island in the main imprint of the kitchen but we've also created this extension of the kitchen
that we call the Larder that allows for for additional refrigeration so that is where we chose
to put a more traditional upright refrigerator and this allows us to have both the feeling of
like a line in a professional kitchen and then the additional refrigeration gives us a bit of
a pantry feel or a larder. So when it comes to materials, decisions as it relates to the kitchen
we obviously have the constraint of the stone but we knew that we didn't want to have a fully,
wood kitchen we wanted to have an interesting material wrapping around our cabinets and even our
appliances so knowing that Fisher & Paykel allowed for this integration to explore something like
unlacquered brass as a wrapper and container for their products it was really compelling for us.
So some of the materials that we brought into the space were really rooted in that kind of tradition
or craft, so in the lower level and in the second floor we installed really beautiful stones that
could be embedded into this material that has been worn and sanded in this way for hundreds,
maybe thousands of years with the kind of aesthetic of time being made visible,
the plaster was actually a huge factor because in some areas it has been repaired,
in some areas it has sand bloat in some areas it's you know traditional lath and plaster and
then when we went to kind of put in new walls we really had to think about how those would seem
together. In terms of light I think that even when it was in its most raw form that was one
of the biggest draws of the space for us, it's just perfectly situated in the site to always
have beautiful light and when we restored the windows we chose to use wavy glass, it gives
this effect of being poolside which really impacts how the light moves within the space.
The gardens are really key because they kind of reinforce that idea of something like inside and
outside so, I love the idea of kind of reclaiming this space that once was a courtyard outside and
kind of building out a garden that we could then not only nurture in the kind of that daily way
that gardens like require but then it also impacts like how we would bring those garden
elements into the kitchen. Now that the space is kind of in its most complete state, it's really
wonderful to live here, I feel like we've been able to create a space that accommodates that
live/work approach and something that we're really excited to be able to be a part of to be honest
it seems like it has an essence and a life of its own that we just are lucky to be a part of.