The brief
A pre-war apartment that had been renovated three times and had lost the plot each time — dropped ceilings hiding original height, a kitchen sealed off from the only south-facing window, and storage bolted onto every wall. The owners wanted fewer things and more light, without turning the place into a gallery.
What we did
We opened the kitchen wall back to the living space, restored the ceiling height across the main rooms, and moved every piece of storage into two full-height joinery walls so the rest of the apartment could stay empty. The palette is three materials and no more: white plaster, pale oak, honed limestone.
- Removed two non-structural walls, restored 340mm of ceiling height
- Custom oak joinery to both flanks of the living space
- Rewired lighting on four circuits with concealed cove detail
- Reclaimed limestone floor throughout the entry and kitchen
“They redrew our apartment three times until the light was right. Two years in, it still feels like the best decision we made.”
The result
The apartment reads as one continuous space with the storage disappearing into the walls. It is smaller on paper than it was — we lost some floor area to joinery — and it feels considerably larger to be in, which is the trade we were after.
