Pied-à-terre Keizersgracht
This Pied-à-terre apartment had to contain a multifunctional room in the middle that is at once part of the living room, a study and a guest room. It’s a very deep space which has the unique feature of having windows on three sides, but not a lot of them. It also has the entrance all the way at the back-corner.
As the position of the entrance made it necessary to make a pretty long hallway, we made a couple of interventions to alleviate the longitudinal space. First of all we treated the division between the hallway and the rooms behind it as an architectural object. It is materialized as a furniture piece, differently from the outer shell of the apartment, thus emphasizing the apartment as one hole. We also repeated the furniture in the living room, to balance the composition and further solve all functional demands.
In the long hallway cabinet we made wide portals, aligned with the windows, as to emphasize the transverse direction. We then made these cabinets slightly oblique; further breaking the longitudinal character of the hallway. This is also repeated in the living room, but it is ‘mirrored’ around the point of the glass wall.
The furniture elements contain all functional needs except for the bathroom; the wardrobe, kitchen, storage, toilet and the fold-out bed. The multifunctional room in the middle can be separated from the living room by a very large glass sliding door (1.8x3.2m) and a curtain which is hidden in the cupboard besides it.
For the atmosphere we wanted to go for a chic serenity, so we kept the contrast relatively low and aimed at a chromatic palette, starting off with the different wood-tones. The secluded toilet and bathroom, although very much in the same pallet, have bit more structure to the materials, alluding very softly and abstractly to a grotto like feel.
