When you're dealing with a small space it's more important than ever to think about light and flexibility to make your home feel spacious and work more efficiently. BoardGrove Architects renovated this pretty typical apartment in Footscray into a light-filled and flexible home...
What was a pretty standard two-bedroom apartment has been transformed by the architects into a more flexible home. Small modifications to the floor plan create multiple entrances into each bedroom, separated by sliding doors. This reconfiguration has a double benefit:
Firstly, it makes these rooms more flexible because their use is undefined - these spaces could be used as bedrooms as they were originally, or they could become a home office, a private sitting area, or how about a cinema room?
Secondly, when the doors are left ajar, light can be borrowed from the bedrooms and bounce into adjoining rooms. This improves the sense of space in the apartment and increases cross-flow ventilation through the whole home.
The original floor plan included an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area in the now traditional format. The architect rearranged this stereotypical configuration to create an ambiguous new kitchen which feels more like an art piece. Cooking equipment and a fridge is concealed within sculptural elements.
"Three objects were developed, a solid white bench, a large metal arched door, raised off the floor and placed flat against the wall and a complimentary arched reveal. Between these three they hold the sink, oven, cook-top and fridge." - BoardGrove Architects
The existing concrete floors and wall are left exposed while a complimentary palette of crisp white and dusty pink soften the brutality of raw concrete.
Unorthodox ideas abound in this simple yet clever project. A wardrobe which faces the hallway can be used as storage for the whole house rather than being dedicated to an individual bedroom. It can be used as a de-facto walk-in-robe. It even has the potential to transform the entry hall into a dressing room! A simple shelf along the blank concrete wall creates utility on a surface that would otherwise be wasted.
Existing Floor Plan
Floor Plan
"Although very modest in scale [Footscray Apartment] raises questions about an everyday domestic space we are all familiar with: the kitchen. It challenges our expectations and it takes a risk– stepping out of the ordinary and trying something different. It throws normality to the wind, reconfiguring something that we all know so well into a new expression." - BoardGrove Architects