Schwefel
An apartment, on the fourth floor of an anonymous apartment block from the seventies - almost found as a bare shell - was converted within a very short time window and a rather tight budget. Nevertheless, the character of the existing should change as much as possible.
There was no built-in furniture or appliances in the kitchen or bathrooms. Some of the wall plasters were in poor condition or did not exist. Floor coverings were already removed from the cement subfloor, only traces of the adhesive indicated the former carpet covering.
Despite its economical dimensions in plan and section, the apartment radiates a certain generosity. It is characterised by the living and dining room, which are offset from each other as independent rooms and yet take up a diagonal relationship to each other, whereby the apartment can be experienced in its entire depth. Attached to it are the kitchen, an adjoining room and an extension room to the living room. A cabinet-like space opens up the apartment and a similar space mediates between the public and private rooms.
Except for a new wall opening between the master bedroom and the bathroom - which is to place both rooms in a stronger relationship to each other and to naturally illuminate the previously very dark bathroom - the apartment was only reinterpreted with the help of the minimal thickness of a layer of paint or varnish on the surface.
On the grinded existing cement floor, a floor pattern consisting of a transparent and a slightly coloured lacquer layer picks up the diagonal room structure of the apartment and indicates a light incidence into the depth. Both cabinet-rooms are now completely painted in black and formulate their threshold function even more strongly. A grey base in the living room refers to the balustrade of the terrace. From this height, a deep blue creates a completely different space next to the living room, which surfaces appear hardly touchable and which thus expands into the seemingly infinite. In the bathroom, different areas are indicated by a fresh green and here, too, the light is apparently drawn into the depth.
