Bright before and after: how the designer renovated a two-room apartment in an old house of the 1960s | ivd.ru
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19 Mar 2023
The colorful interior was created for a young man with a technical education and a significant, honorable profession. It would seem that a serious person should choose minimalism, modern aesthetics, and, in extreme cases, a fashionable loft. But no, for good reasons, the client preferred the Scandinavian style.
The customer is a young teacher of mechanical engineering at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, designs and assembles a dream laboratory, introduces domestic software and new teaching methods, and in his spare time he is fond of cooking, first of all he needed a study. The pandemic has made adjustments to modern education, and the teacher needed a decent home, space for online conferences with a large table on which drawings of A0 format would be placed. I wanted ergonomics from the kitchen, a large number of storage places and a convenient location of a whole arsenal of household appliances.
Redevelopment
A two-bedroom apartment in a five-storey building of series II-14, built in Moscow in the early 60s of the last century, is distinguished by a number of features: thick brick walls, three-meter ceilings, a beam running between the kitchen and the bathroom and continuing in the corridor. In the original layout, almost nothing was touched, only the largest of the rooms was divided into a bedroom and an office by means of a glass partition.
Installation of a translucent structure does not require approval. In addition, an additional entrance was made to the bedroom from the living room. Thus, a circular passage through all residential areas turned out.
Repair
The opening in the interior partition made of gypsum concrete was made with the help of a grinder with a cutting disc on the stone. Where the disc got on the armature, they used equipment for working on metal. The bulge of the partition in the corridor was broken with a sledgehammer. In the corner of the corridor, along the border with the bathroom, where they planned to place a washing machine, a hole was made for the supply of communications.
Drain pipes and cold water supply were allowed under the bathroom. Waterproofing was performed on the floor in the corridor due to the placement of household appliances. The screed was not changed, the base was leveled with a self-leveling compound for laying waterproof laminate and porcelain stoneware.
It was decided to leave the old cast-iron radiators with open piping to emphasize the historical component of the house. They were painted in contrasting colors to the interior. The window sills were reduced, making the takeaways minimal.
The slabs of the upper floors had visible irregularities at the joints and required time-consuming alignment. A limited budget dictated a different design option for the stretch ceiling.
The windows were installed by the previous owners of the apartment and were in good condition. But the window sills, interior and entrance doors were changed. The installation of the glass partition, made to order according to individual sizes, took place at the final stage of repair. Its metal frame was assembled on the spot and rigidly attached to the walls.
Design
The interior design was dictated by the preferences of the customer and the existing modern furniture created based on the mid-century modern style. The atmosphere harmoniously fits into the historical context of the years of construction of the house.
The door from the living room leads to the bedroom and study. Yellow stripes under the ceiling, dictated by the presence of a beam, are on the perimeter of all rooms, except for the bathroom and bathroom. For greater expressiveness, two shades are used: in rooms with natural light, more saturated, where artificial lighting, lighter.
The palette of the bedroom and study is due to colorful wallpaper and complemented with neutral shades. Radiators, baseboards and a glass partition in the "anthracite" profile connected all the elements into a single whole; due to the large number of doors, the space turned out to be as open as possible.
To create an accent panel, the designer chose exotic wallpaper produced by one of the oldest Swedish factories. The material is not only of high quality, but also an amazing pattern. It is intertwined with bizarre coral-like lichens, northern plants with berries, among which bunnies, fawns, foxes hide. The print was created just in the 60s of the last century and perfectly fit into the interior concept. Printing on a collagraphic machine, operating with seven colors using the "raw on raw" method, produces the effect of an expressive drawing by hand. Bright, but pleasing to the eye, the panel corresponds to Hugge's philosophy of Scandinavian values, implying comfort and home well-being. Hugge welcomes modest decor, ornaments and drawings of ethnic and natural character, natural materials and the ability to cook delicious at home. In other words, the enjoyment of simple joys.
Laconic Roman curtains emphasized the masculine character of the interior. Decorative textiles for the kitchen were selected taking into account the active primary colors involved in the living spaces, which made it possible to visually combine all functional areas.
In a separate bathroom, tiles corresponding to the range of the interior are used. There is a storage cabinet in the toilet above the installation system. A suspended toilet is as convenient as possible when cleaning the room: there are no pipes under it, the drain goes into the wall. In the bathroom, under the overhead sink, there is a capacious pedestal, which also hides the water pipes.
Designer Lydia Napreenko (Mimosa Interiors), author of the project:
I like to create bright interiors, so the work was contentious. The project was adopted literally without a single edit. The approvals went very quickly, giving rise to a pleasant feeling of the mood on the wave of the customer. At the stage of preparing the concept, accent wallpapers were doubtful. But they still took center stage in the project and combined all the elements. I know from experience that clients with a request to "make it brighter" often back down, and catchy colors remain only in textiles. Therefore, I am sincerely glad that we managed to implement such a colorful project. Probably, the role was played by the fact that the customer had lived in a beige interior for a long time, was tired of monochrome and was glad of everything bright and unusual. All stages, from design to furniture placement and textile decoration, took about a year. Since the apartment is located on the top floor in a five-storey building without an elevator, and even the ceiling height is large, it was not easy to lift the elements of the glass partition.
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Living room
Living room
Living room
Living room
Bedroom
Bedroom
Bedroom
Bedroom
Bedroom
Bedroom-study
Bedroom-study
Bedroom-study
Bedroom-study
Bedroom-study
Bedroom-study
Office
Office
Office
Hallway
Hallway
Hallway
Bathroom
How the apartment looked before the renovation
The editorial board warns that in accordance with the Housing Code of the Russian Federation, coordination of ongoing alterations and alterations is required.
