42 m2 living space

Survey

The apartment is located in an apartment building, build in 1967, in the central neighborhood of Kolonaki, in Athens. The typical floor plan of the time defined five distinct areas: bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and entrance hall. A double leaf sliding door between the bedroom and the living room united, to a certain limited extent, the two main spaces, while all the spaces were connected through the hall. In this condition the service entry zone was cut off from natural light and any view of the city. The equal surface distribution of the two main spaces and their hard boundaries created confined spaces with limited views and natural light.

Proposal

The new floor plan unites all the individual rooms of the apartment, except the bathroom.
The dividing walls between the rooms are removed and replaced either by perforated metal elements of thin cross-sections, like the metal bookcase in the center of the floor plan, or by movable elements like sliding and hidden doors. As a result, natural light diffuses throughout the space and views are multiplied. All the new vertical surfaces - sliding partitions, metal bookcase, closets, cabinets, curtains - extend from the floor to the ceiling, unifying the space vertically as well, creating niches and hidden storage spaces. The openings of the apartment’s elevation facing the road are now standing next to each other, unobstructed, allowing a city view visible all the way through from the entrance hall.
Activities are dispersed and overlayed in each area of this small apartment. The kitchen worktop serves also as a dining table, while the desk is also a seat to stare out the window. The bed during the day is part of the living room while during the sleeping hours it can be isolated in a quiet white box. The central metal structure has two sides and the TV, as part of it, rotates, on a pole, 180 degrees.
The walls, the ceiling, the structures, the movable partitions, and the equipment are painted white aiming to achieve homogeneity in a small space composed of multiple elements. A mirror surface on the bedroom closet doors, perpendicular to the facade of the apartment, expands the space, multiplies the opening of the balcony door, and reflects in the interior the exterior of the city.
The tranquility, transparency and purity of the apartment create an atmosphere of repose in the heterogeneous busy environment of the city and the “polykatoikia” *.

*Typical Greek apartment building