Renovating an old apartment – ideas for minimalist design with rough concrete walls
Deviating from conventional practice, a family of five wanted to move out of their suburban house and renovate an old apartment. The project’s designers were intrigued by the fresh approach of the customers. They believe that a home should be inhabited by people, stories and experiences, not things. Because of this, their main goal was to live in a minimalist way – both in terms of style and the amount of material things.
Renovating a minimalist apartment in an old building
By and large, customer requests were very modest. Most of all, the family needed four separate bedrooms, a spacious common living area, and unfinished, rough-looking concrete walls and ceilings.
The main task of the authors of the construction project was to first design a fully functional plan and to preserve and highlight the existing advantages of the space in which people play a central role.
For this reason, the structure of the floor plan is dominated by symmetry and orderliness. The rooms surround the staircase as if they were turning life in a circle. If you want to renovate such an old apartment, this would be the optimal floor plan. The 150 square meter apartment mainly has three children’s rooms, a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, two bathrooms and a closet.
Clean interior design for more space
The central idea of the modern interior is above all to preserve the purity and to replace as many of the existing technical solutions as possible. The residents wanted to renovate the old apartment so that only the essential levels in the rooms are covered with furniture.
Monochrome colors and as much minimalist materials as possible such as metal, wool, wood and concrete dominate the apartment. There’s a lot of black paint inside that creates an impression of depth, acts as a balance and absorbs certain details. In addition, the black delimits the gray rooms in different zones and thus forms spatial structures.
The entire living space also has a unique lighting system that is matched to the height of the room. It creates a network and gives the rooms integrity. As a contrast to rough concrete, the visualization with marble was chosen for the bathroom. Sterile, large tiles create a clear separation and simply and elegantly indicate the function of the corresponding area.
Renovate a stylish apartment in an old building
In the living area there are still two pieces of art that differ greatly in style and brushstroke. One is a portrait of a woman by Gia Ram who, in the opinion of the architects, comes to terms with the rough and flowing concrete structures of the walls.
The other – Chromatic Aberrations by Tadao Cern – is very geometric and clear. It also communicates with the strict forms and elements of the living space. This also emphasizes the two sides of the interior – the free, rough and expressive and the structural, subtle, geometric, minimal and hypnotizing.
