Our design concept was pretty simple.
We wanted to obtain bright, bold and colorful interior
with a lot of greenery visible from the entrance.
We wanted to expose second hand furniture
and we wanted to use materials
that will look good for years to come.
My name is Kalina
and I'm an architect. For this project
I have designed with my husband.
We designed this apartment for my sister, Kasia.
This apartment is located
in the capital city of Poland, in Warsaw.
This neighborhood is called Stare Bielany.
This is a great example of
Polish postwar housing estate.
The scale of the buildings is very human friendly.
There's a lot of residential greenery in between, and all basic
amenities are located nearby.
From its beginning, it was a residential building.
It was erected in the sixties.
Kasia is the second owner of the apartment.
She's a civil engineer by day, and her hobby is working
with ceramic and porcelain.
Kasia had three main requirements.
First one, she loves to cook
So she needed a full size kitchen.
Not only a kitchenette.
The second requirement was about vintage elements.
So we incorporated those pieces into design as well.
And her third requirement, she's a hobby ceramicist,
so she wanted to display her small collection somewhere on the wall.
The layout of the apartment was unchanged from the sixties.
It was the apartment for a family of three.
The original plan had a dark
hallway, narrow kitchen, two separate rooms, and the bathroom
with the washing machine that blocked the door.
In our design, we removed the wall between the kitchen and the living room
We removed the original bedroom’s door
and part of the wall to create a second entrance to the bedroom.
We also relocated the washing machine
The entrance is very central,
so almost the whole apartment is visible from the threshold.
Inside this entrance zone
we have designed custom made closet made from Oak Vineyard panels
Inside this big closet we provided some space
for shoes, for clothes, and we placed the washing machine as well
To separate this entrance zone from the living room
We have designed openwork structure.
Some time ago Kasia fell in love with Alexander Calder’s mobiles,
so it was our original inspiration.
At the beginning Kasia prepared a lot of sketches
of her dream structure and we used those sketches.
The structure is pretty simple and it doesn't block the view.
That was pretty important for us because this apartment's only 33 square meters.
In the living room, we have L-shaped sofa,
small side table, floating TV cabinet,
and there is the TOGO armchair.
On the floor, we have oak parquet.
This pattern is called herringbone, and it was quite popular in sixties
when the building was erected.
Kitchen is a full size and there is a lot of space to store food,
to prepare food ,to cook, to eat, and to have coffee.
Kitchen is the main furniture in the living room.
That's why we have designed oak veneer fronts at the bottom
and we combine those with light pink fronts of the top.
Pink Kasia’s a favorite color.
We combined those two types of materials with the maroon worktop
finishing with a wooden edge.
On the wall
we have a singular module of string shelf to expose
Kasia’s ceramic collection
Between the kitchen and the living room area
there’s a round wooden table and above this table there is a flower pot lamp.
We have three chairs designed
in theseventies by Bruno Rey.
When Kasia bought those chairs, they were painted
dark brown and they were in pretty bad condition.
We have decided to use green stain because inside the terrazzo
on the floor, we have a lot of green dots.
You can enter the bedroom
directly from the entrance or from the living room
through a narrow wall opening
Inside the bedroom.
the bed is soft pink, with a fancy headboard.
Inside the bed there is a storage space.
And next to the bed there is a wall lamp for reading.
The closet has both
open and closed storage drawers.
There is some space for coat hangers
and some space for books.
The bathroom door is visible from the entrance,
so we wanted to have it as neutral as can be.
At the bottom of the door, there is a small gap to provide
air for the bathroom.
The bathroom is pretty compact.
There is a toilet, storage above it,
a shower.
We have designed a pattern of holes because behind this perforated panel
the heating pipe is located and we wanted to provide
some heat in the bathroom, especially during the winter.
We have designed a curved vanity to move around the space a little bit easier
When it comes to designing small space
our philosophy is pretty simple.
We always want to make as much storage space as possible,
and then we have a possibility to expose some beautiful furniture and that's great
if those furniture are secondhand.
Because there’s no planet B, we should build
and use space as smart and efficiently as possible.
Small apartments if designed are very good places to live.