Crisp and clean three-level urban apartment in Kiev

This urban apartment was constructed in 2012 by Olga Akulova Design created from a C19TH building, on Basseynaya str., Kiev, Ukraine. The 861 square foot (80 square meters) home has been spread out onto three levels over an arch and a road. On the first level, the designers organized the guestroom and the kitchen area. The two stairways lead to the second and third levels where the master bedroom and dining area are situated.

Photos: Roman Shyshak / Stylist: Anna Polyushko

Charming 41 square meters apartment in Stockholm

This charming Stockholm, Sweden apartment, spotted on Alvhem, is situated on the second floor of a three story building with breathtaking views over the river. The home is extremely well designed and space efficient for only 441 square feet (41 square meters) of living space, offering an open contemporary floor plan, high ceilings and a sunny balcony. With a continuous floor plan, the home feels quite spacious and the large windows give a bright and airy feeling. Painted white boarded floors run throughout the apartment. The recently renovated kitchen is open to the living room with a built-in breakfast bar dividing the space that serves as extra work/countertop while providing dining space. The spacious bedroom features partly glazed double doors that leads out to a cozy balcony.  There is also a stylish bathroom that was recently renovated in timeless colors and materials. The apartment is located towards a quiet courtyard and out toward the river with the absence of traffic, this is a very quiet and peaceful home.

Fascinating loft apartment conversion in Portland

Jessica Helgerson Interior Design brings to us this fabulous loft apartment in Portland’s NW 13th Avenue, one of Portland’s most interesting streets. The loft is located in the recently transformed Pearl District, in an old brick and concrete building that was originally a warehouse and manufacturing facility. It was converted into condos in the 1990s. This particular unit had been divided up so that a long and narrow hall was the first point of entry, with limited storage and a rather jarring color palette of red, green and blue along with yellowish bamboo.

The space was fairly small, only 870 square feet. The clients asked for the designer’s to create a space that was open feeling, with lots of storage, room to entertain large groups, and a warm and sophisticated color palette. In response to this, a layout was designed in which the corridor is eliminated and the experience upon entering the space is open, inviting and more functional for cooking and entertaining. In contrast to the public spaces, the bedroom feels private and calm tucked behind a wall of built-in cabinetry.

The large scale wood dining table and coffee table add earthiness and warmth to the space. Vintage Eames DKW leather, steel, and wood chairs add pattern and interest and pair well with the dark steel and blown-glass chandelier.

The kitchen has glazed brick tiles, honed marble counters, dark cabinets and walnut shelves.

Visual interest and contrast was created by painting the beams a dark earthy grey and the walls a soft yet luminous shade of white. A variety of textiles was then introduced; the hand-stitched felt headboard, the vintage Moroccan rug, the heavy woven fabrics used to upholster the custom sofa and cushions. A series of blown glass pendant lights swag playfully over the sofa.

One of the client’s requests was to find a good home for “Megatron” their big screen television, a member of the family with a personality of his own.  A custom console table was custom designed, made from antique Chinese doors and wrapped in a shiny modern lacquered box. The large scale of the console visually anchors the television while housing the various components.

Photos: Lincoln Barbour

Charming Swedish digs boasts unique design details

This charming apartment we spotted on Alvhem boasts high ceilings and unique design features, situated in Vasastaden, Stockholm, Sweden. The 1,087 square foot home has been beautifully preserved with a welcoming entryway and spacious floor plan consisting of a living room/dining room, fully equipped kitchen, master bedroom and bathroom. The flooring throughout the main living spaces consists of orginal plank wood floors. The open living and dining area is perfect for entertaining. The bedroom is spacious and harmonious with a quite courtyard location. The wallpaper gives a romantic atmosphere and the contrast blends nicely against the white painted planks on the floor.

Completely renovated first apartment in Tel Aviv

After receiving some positive feedback on the DIY-inspired home we featured here, we decided to feature another unique home that was designed by an industrial design student who is just 27 years old and lives in Tel Aviv, Israel. Ron Benshoshan and his girlfriend had just purchased their first apartment and the place was in need of a major overhaul, so they decided to do all the renovations themselves. The 65 square meters apartment was built in the 70’s, the couple wished to have a contemporary yet functional design that is attractive and comfortable. With a limited budget and a short time frame, the project was daunting as everything needed to be replaced. Due to the budgetary constraints, it led the couple in a new direction, consisting of hand crafting and building the majority of the items that are featured in the project. It took approximately two months to complete.

Here is a description of the project from the homeowners, “In short we re-did the whole place: Tore down the wall in the kitchen opening it up to the living room and dining area. United the bathroom making one long and spacious bathroom. Made the bedroom bigger by closing an indoor balcony. A bar that comes out of the wall. I personally designed and built most of the items seen in the pictures: Large wall clock, floating unit below the TV, round table and red chairs, table, pipe lamp and the cats playing area which is hung in the red room, faucet in the bathroom, wooden bar, lights in the living room (with red cords)
bed and side table in bedroom.”  Via

Be sure to take a look at the before pictures at the bottom of the page to get an idea of how much work went into creating this incredible space! If you want to see more images with before and after’s, be sure to check out Ron’s website here. Please leave us some feedback on what you think of this project. What was your favorite part of the design? Anything that didn’t work for you?

PHOTOS PRIOR TO RENOVATION:

Photos: Ron Benshoshan

Bold and colorful 65 square meters flat in São Paulo

This ultra-funky apartment in Sao Paulo, Brazil is chalk full of color which helps to make everything seem so much larger. Spotted on Casa, this small living space is only 700 square feet (65 square meters) but with an abundance of light and color, the home feels spacious and cozy. This combination is the big hit of this interior project, which was carried out by the architect and designer Adriana Yazbek. The apartment was originally compartmentalized, which made the rooms dark and unlivable. Adriana opened one of the two rooms and joined to the living room, organizing the office. The door was taken out of the bedroom and exchanged with a curtain to add privacy and separate the space. The flooring was replaced with wood in the dry areas and blue cement in the kitchen and colorful tiling in the bathroom.

Photos: Marco Antonio

Mini-Loft Apartment Conversion in Prague

This loft conversion has been designed by architecture studio Dalibor Hlavacek and is situated in Prague, in a corner apartment house built in the thirties. The attic is northeast oriented, facing the street. Originally, it was used for drying laundry. The basic disposition concept reacts to the configuration of the surrounding urban environment. The “social” quarters utilize a view of the Stromovkapark and a Zoo in Troja, the bedroom part is placed in front of a high-grown lime-tree. The tree obstructs a view from the opposite buildings and helps cool the interior in the summer.

The concept arises from two contradictory requirements; an effort towards the most effective usage of limited floor space, and at the same time, the creation of a clear, generous space. The loft apartment is therefore conceived as a duplex apartment; the kitchen – living room is two-storey and offers a view into the roof construction. The quiescent part of the disposition (bedroom, bathroom and toilette) is spanned with an open gallery containing a study.

If need should arise the study can be used as a guest-room. In the future, the gallery will function as the parents’ bedroom and the present bedroom will be changed into a children’s room. The gallery is accessed via staircase and a steel footbridge, creating an intimate “promenade architecturale”, thus enabling perception of the elevated living-room space and the gallery space from different perspective.

The goal of the design was to create a clean interior without decorative overkill. Every centimeter of space is used as storage space. The staircase to the gallery also functions as a kitchen unit, a gas boiler and a bookcase are placed into the niches between chimneys. The kitchen was designed with great care. Even though it is small, it offers all the necessary surfaces and spaces. Kitchen cabinet doors are made of oak veneer, the worktop is patinous granite neroassoluto, appliances and holds are stainless-steel.The rare-facing panel of the kitchen is lined with glass of the same tincture as the upper cabinets.

The interior material solution creates a dialogue between rough surface of the original brick chimney walls and the clean contours of plasterboard constructions. Mass of the sanitary space is clearly distinguished by gray plaster inviting to be touched. Floors and solitaire furniture are oak; the inbuilt furniture is white varnished.

On the gallery, two working tables are placed into the space between windows, offering a view of the roofs of the opposite houses. Four window triplets of roof windows with low-energy glass illuminate the entire loft space. The windows minimize the need for artificial lighting and help to create a feeling of interior airiness. Outside screens are connected to an intelligent electronic system and in the summer protect the interior from overheating.

Inbuilt wardrobes form an entire bedroom wall as well as a gallery wall. An electric switchboard is part of the inbuilt furniture.

Bathroom cabinet harbors a washing machine and a drier. Space above the toilet holds cleaners and closet literature.

Photos: Filip Slapal

40 m2 Flat in Budapest by Suto Interior Architects

The 40 m2 flat in Budapest Hungary was designed by Suto Interior Architects in Budapest, Hungary. The design concept given by the client was to rebuild a flat, which was before used by an older generation, to modernize for well-organized bachelors. The architects used smart, cool solutions with masculine colors and use of materials. The spaces are leading and reflecting to each other, the flat is only 430 square feet (40 square meters) all together, but feels much more spacious.

Every interior detail is prepared with meticulous care and has a function. Because of the “put the space into space” design concept there are no unnecessary walls and hallways. The furniture has the function of separating different areas. Surfaces are used for storing everywhere, systems of drawers, shelves and storage units, which were customized and designed to suit the life style of the client. Their surfaces are uniformly painted grey throughout the whole flat.

The wall is covered with grey “Elitis” wallpaper. It is also used to intensify the muscular character of the living room area. In the forefront is a Flos Toio lamp from 1962, which could be defined as an artwork. A painting is from a Hungarian contemporary artist, Zsuzsi Csiszér with the Vitra Suita sofa of Antonio Citterio fills and creates this space. They both reflect to the sensitivity of the owner, their presence is unquestionable.

The living room and the kitchen are separated by a glass wall, which holds the television and the air conditioning as well. Its elegant style is softened and linked with the grey surfaces by colorful Kristalia bar chairs.

The home office is located at the light end of the kitchen, in its front a high table functions to stop us from looking inside. Placing the home office here was necessary to be able to keep the space airy and elegantly ordered in the living room. The home office and the kitchen blend into each other. It is not clear where one ends and the other begins.

The bedroom is both calm and pulsating. A darker grey, retro and a Tom Dixon table lamp define its milieu.

The different shades of grey are completed with rustic oak parquet.

The boiler and the washing-drying machine are hidden behind a door, which can slide into the wall. The Mirage Nolita surfaces imitating concrete and the tube lights running from the mirror to the ceiling make the open bathroom look so cool.

There is no classical bathroom. This function is fulfilled by a tall spacious sink and built shower in an area which is cut out off from the common spaces.

Photos: Zsolt Batar

Manhattan Microloft on the Upper West Side

 A compact four-level apartment was purchased in 1994 by Huxley Somerville on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York. At the time that he found this fixer upper that was purchased for $95,000, he was doing property inspections. He is now a managing director at Fitch Ratings, a commercial mortgage-backed securities division.  Mr. Somerville once considered studying architecture, so he saw the potential in this small 425 square foot brownstone apartment, with a kitchen and dining area packing in the vestibule, a small living area up a few steps and a bedroom and bathroom on the top floor.

He thought the space was more intriguing than just the normal four walls, yet the drawbacks were evident, particularly the minuscule sleeping area. The space was very oddly shaped to fit a proper bed and the apartment was a walk-up on the fourth and fifth floors. On the plus side, there was a roof terrace up another flight of stairs off the bedroom and there was nobody above inhabiting space above the apartment. The best aspect of the apartment was the high ceilings, which were just over 11 feet in the living room and just over 12 feet in the bedroom.

After marrying his wife in 1997, they sublet the apartment and moved out of the country. In 2009 the apartment’s longtime tenant was moving out so Mr. Somerville’s impulse was to sell the property. The couple and their teenage daughter were making plans to move into an 18th-century farmhouse in Armonk, New York, yet he had pondered over the years on how to make the nearly 25-foot vertically dimensioned small apartment more livable. He thought the place had a lot of potential and decided to renovate it and use it as a pied-à-terre. Enlisting the help of architecture firm Specht Harpman, whom he had collaborated with in the past, they came up with a solution to create four separate living platforms that would provide enough room for all the essentials and allow the apartment to feel open and light-filled, with no barriers. Via

The living room is furnished with a Gus* Modern Jane Bi-Sectional sofa (about $3,200 at Bobby Berk Home) and a Ligne Roset Pagnon & Pelhaître Crescendo table ($2,270). The baby alpaca throw is from Jonathan Adler ($295), and the Fillsta pendant lamp is from Ikea (about $30).

The bathroom is in the space formerly occupied by the kitchen. The walls are covered in Savoy Ricepaper and Crystal Glass Dew tiles from Ann Sacks.

The sunken kitchen is in what was once the dining area. The backsplash is painted with Benjamin Moore’s Harbor Fog and covered in glass. The Julien UrbanEdge 3647 undermounted stainless steel sink is from AF Supply (about $700). The blue glass candleholders are from C. Wonder.

The new kitchen, as elegantly compact as a ship’s cabin, has two burners and a convection oven, crisp glass backsplashes and a combination countertop-and-breakfast bar. (For formal meals, the coffee table can be elevated to dining height.)

The architect Scott Specht describes the apartment’s principal design element, the queen-size bed platform that cantilevers out over the living room, as the “object around which everything revolves.”

In the living room, the architects demolished the imposing, drywall-enclosed stairway on the eastern wall; the stair they substituted on the west side is lightly screened by vertical cables and resembles a Japanese tansu cabinet with multiple drawers and closets. The exposed brick throughout the apartment was painted a light-reflecting white.

On the third level, the enlarged bedroom contains a queen-size cantilevered bed platform that projects out over the living room. By leaving the space above the bed open to the living area, the architects were able to preserve views and bring in daylight from the windows facing the rooftop terrace.

The bedroom space once felt toxic and is now very soothing and comforting for the owners.

A second tansu-style stair leads to the terrace, on the apartment’s fourth level.

The owner’s of this Manhattan apartment, Rosanne and Huxley Sommerville, stated, “two people could live here full time quite comfortably — almost.”

The renovation cost about $400,000, but a good part of that cost was from being on the top floor and hauling things up, taking things down.

The 3-D model depicts alternating solids and voids, and artfully layered horizontal and vertical planes.

Pictures prior to the renovation:

The living room, before renovation.

The living room, before renovation.

The entry hall, before renovation.

The second flight of stairs, leading up to the apartment’s terrace.

Another view of the living area, before renovation.

Photos:  Trevor Tondro & Taggart Sorensen

An intriguing Brooklyn Brownstone Apartment

This intriguing Brooklyn Brownstone Apartment was designed by the talented design firm of Kelly Behun | STUDIO. With wood flooring throughout, except for tiling in the kitchen and bathroom, no details have been overlooked. Original ornate wood moldings have been preserved and given a brand new coat of white paint. The entryway features a unique detail with funky graffiti to greet you into the warm and cozy home. Designer furnishings helps to update the historical space mixed with unique decor that adds character. The interiors work in synergy to evoke a harmonious ambiance that creates a fun and playful living environment.

Kelly Behun|STUDIO is an interior design firm specializing in residential design that operates on a laboratory model where experimentation is encouraged and collaborations with contemporary artists produce pioneering designs for the home. STUDIO provides a very hands on approach with specialized services that produce customized environments unique to each client.

Photos: Douglas Friedman