Belgian studio De Meester Vliegen Architecten overhauled an apartment at the prime of a developing in Antwerp to produce a penthouse that also functions as a personal workplace .
The apartment occupies the seventh floor of a 1960s constructing in central Antwerp. Most of the practical spaces, including the kitchen and storage facilities, have been relocated into a central volume clad in a nut wood veneer with a very polished finish.
The residing regions wrap around this block, which sits slightly off centre, and wooden doors fold out to near places of the apartment off for privacy.
“A single massive volume functions as the divider of distinct places and creator of circulation,” explained studio co-founder Tom de Meester.
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“The design is manufactured so that proper now the consumer makes use of this room as his personal workplace, but they could later on reside in this room as an apartment in the city.”
A partial partition is designed at one particular end of the apartment with the addition of a seven-metre-prolonged monolithic green marble volume that hangs from the ceiling. This two-ton addition aids conceal an entrance to the functional block.
“The dialogue in between these two volumes and their materialisation defines the atmosphere and type of this project,” said de Meester.
“This dividing component produces circulation among wooden volume and residing spot, and the [pairing] of the marble’s normal decorative veins and our extremely minimal architecture is in our eyes pure beauty.”
A bespoke steel fireplace is wedged amongst the marble block and the floor, providing added support. A series of cupboards are also concealed inside the volume.
At the other finish, the residing region is divided in two to create a dining or meeting area and a bedroom.
Nooks about the edges of the living spaces are filled with wooden bookshelves, whilst floor-to-ceiling white lacquered MDF cupboards offer additional storage. These are complemented by columns of free of charge-standing storage units manufactured from the exact same materials.
Big windows about the perimeter give views of the city centre and many nearby churches.
The bathroom – housed on one particular side of the apartment – is lined with a layer of green Bissaza mosaic tiles, and fittings produced from white Corian, a synthetic stone materials.
Most other fittings in the apartment are function built from the same white MDF materials, aside from a small collection of classic furniture.
These include a pair of green-upholstered 637 Utrecht chairs designed by Gerrit Rietveld and produced by Cassina, and office chairs made by the Eames’.
A Corian table from MDF Italia acts as each a dining and work surface, and a massive Andy sofa from B&B Italia supplies a lounging location.
