The Space Age Apartment_ Photos

I present you a 2-bedroom apartment with internal area of 75 sq. m, out of 101 sq. m total area of the unit, turned into a cozy home for a 2-child family with a reference to the retro Space age interior style of the 70’s.
Beforehand, the flat was used as an office, so we first met an open-space of united bedrooms and corridor. The key point was a set of installations in the corner of the living room, provided for a laundry or bathroom.

What we did at the beginning was demolishing the walls of the former corridor and built-up new walls from 2-ply drywalls, with sound-proof membrane and hemp wadding to divide the new bedrooms, a long corridor with 4-meter storage furniture and vanity and a new laundry room with a toilet and boiler. We reduced the living room area a little, but we gained the heart of the home – a cozy relax area with bookcase for statement pieces and a reading armchair.

Colors are rich, intense but balanced. Shapes are simple, geometric with a touch of retrofuturism, that nowadays is less about spaceships, more about the feeling of the era when people visualized the future. Furniture and lighting are vibrant, bold, in bright colors and clean shapes. The lighting globes in the living room remind of group of planets, while the custom designed wallpaper on the wall gives a mystical landscape of a distant planet, turning the dining nearly to a film set. The plastic chairs come from the 70’s style and are the easiest for cleaning.

The wall covering solution was new for me – all walls are covered in wallpapers with rich texture. The main white plaster wallpaper brings us back to the end of the 20th century and gives a special relief to the walls. Bedrooms are covered in wallpaper resembling linen, grain and braided fence, adding to comfort and acoustics. The tiny terrazzo décor in the bathroom and kitchen countertop is an extension of the wallpaper’s texture and hides small stains.

An important part of the project is the flooring – all rooms are covered in linoleum – a revived retro material, made from flaxseed oil, mixed with wooden flour, resin, jute. It is glued onto a self-leveling compound and it is highly durable against water and stains, as well as beautifully mélanged from colorful pigments.
Metal details are all in stainless steel – typical of the Space age too. Mixers, shower, hooks, lamps, door handles – they are all in the inox finish. The kitchen hood with its exposed duct deliberately evokes the systems of a spaceship.

The project plans a future development of the apartment by swapping the two bedrooms, once the children grow, without altering the installations.