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    Studio Noju creates intimate colourful spaces within open-plan Seville apartment

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    A pop-up guest bedroom features in this open-plan apartment by Studio Noju, which was renovated to create the illusion of having separate spaces and dressed in colours that nod to its Seville location.

    Casa Triana is a 60-square-metre apartment renovation in the Triana neighbourhood of Seville, southern Spain.
    It is the debut collaborative project by architects Antonio Mora and Eduardo Tazón, who co-founded their firm Studio Noju – a shortening of “not just”.
    Casa Triana is Studio Noju’s debut projectSpread across an open-plan area, the apartment features a bedroom for a single occupant, as well as a separate living space with living and dining areas and a kitchen. A bathroom is also included in the dwelling.
    “Our main strategy was to create the illusion of having several independent spaces within the open floor plan,” Mora and Tazón told Dezeen.

    A flexible curtain can create a pop-up bedroom in the living spaceIn line with this objective, an additional pop-up bedroom for guests can be created in the living space thanks to a retractable blue curtain, which is either stowed away or deployed to make a rippled partition.
    The main bedroom also includes a walk-in wardrobe that is separated from the rest of the space in the same way.
    The main bedroom’s walk-in wardrobe is also concealed by a curtainEach area of Casa Triana is distinguished by its own jagged colourful alcove made from readily available and low-cost roof ridges, known as “cumbreras” in Spanish.
    The ridges are typically used to cap gabled roofs in traditional construction projects. Studio Noju placed the horizontal V-shaped ridges next to each other vertically to delineate these distinctive spaces.
    “We created the alcoves with the idea of ‘architectural texture’, which gives them a distinctive three-dimensional backdrop, creating an interesting play of light and shadows while giving depth to the space,” said Mora and Tazón.
    Roof ridges define the texture of each alcoveThe alcoves’ colours create a lively contrast with each other, such as the cool lime green kitchen unit and the adjacent dining space dressed in a peaceful orange hue.
    “Triana is charged with a myriad of colour references that are distinctly part of the architectural heritage,” explained the architects.
    “The apartment’s design references some of these swatches, which are unmistakably Sevillian colours, such as the ‘albero’ yellow, a type of sand that covers some of the city’s streets and parks.”

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    Casa Triana features a mix of bespoke furniture by Studio Noju and pieces sourced from a range of other interior designers.
    A pale grey Delaktig Sofa by Tom Dixon for IKEA was placed in the living space, as well as a matt-lacquered wooden bar cabinet and gradient rug, both custom-made by Studio Noju.
    Delicate black Drop Chairs by Arne Jacobsen and Fritz Hansen frame a sleek bespoke table by Studio Noju in the dining area.
    Drop Chairs frame a custom-made dining tableWhile Mora and Tazón explained that Casa Triana’s design intends to avoid feeling like a “characterless loft,” they emphasised the importance of making the most of available space in a one-bedroom apartment.
    “Increasing real estate prices are making it very difficult for young people to access the property market, who are mostly bound to smaller apartments, such as this one,” the studio said.
    “From a design perspective, there is a need to answer to this reality, and in this case, we wanted to create the feeling of a more spacious home for the owner.”
    The kitchen area has a lime green colourStudio Noju was founded in 2020, although Mora and Tazón began collaborating on Casa Triana in 2019.
    Other small apartments with creative interior designs include a home in Athens within a semi-basement storage space by Point Supreme and a New York apartment by Martin Hopp with a retractable dining table.
    The photography is by Studio Noju. 

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      Martin Hopp adds space-saving “micro elements” to his Manhattan apartment

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      New York architect Martin Hopp aimed to make the most of his dark, irregularly shaped apartment by using lots of white and creating clever “micro elements” like a retractable dining table.

      Encompassing 700 square feet (65 square metres), the Hopp Apartment is located on the garden level of a 1930s, multi-storey building in the city’s Chelsea neighbourhood.
      The unit has various limitations and idiosyncrasies due to renovations that were made to the building’s foundation.
      Martin Hopp renovated his small, irregularly shaped Chelsea apartment”Its odd layout and challenging features of exposed foundation walls and large structural columns were further complicated by being partially submerged below grade and hemmed in by foundations,” Martin Hopp, who runs the eponymous local studio.
      “This gave the apartment a subterranean feel that only allowed for brief moments of natural daylight.”

      Hopp used white to brighten the dark basement suiteHopp set out to introduce a feeling of lightness and brightness, along with maximising space by using built-in millwork and flexible “micro-elements” that enable openness, privacy and multi-functionality.
      In the L-shaped social area – which accommodates cooking, dining and lounging – he and his team lined the walls with all-white cabinetry.
      Built into one spot is a “rotating table” that can be easily tucked away when not in use. The team also added a folding door that forms a separation between the kitchen and the rest of the room.

      Across from the dining nook is a living room with a built-in, white sofa. Between the dining and lounge space are steps to the unit’s front door, and beyond it, a wooden deck.
      The bedroom is located just off the kitchen and is fitted with simple furnishings and ample storage space. To the other side of the kitchen is a corridor that leads to a bathroom and an office space.
      The apartment features a storable tableThe bathroom features shelving and backlit glass panels that were made possible by the discovery of a two-foot-deep cavity during demolition. The discovery “gave us the opportunity to think creatively about how to use the space”, the design studio said.
      Similarly, the team got creative when designing the office, which was formerly a large closet. In addition to serving as a work area, the space now doubles as guest quarters, owing to the insertion of a Murphy bed designed by Hopp.
      The bedroom is off the main roomPrivacy is provided by sliding wooden doors, along with a pivoting door that extends across the hallway.
      “A slightly oversized closet was an opportunity to create a multi-functional space that could be guest room, home office and storage area all at the same time,” the studio said.
      A Murphy bed in the office folds down for guests”Conceived of pre-Covid, the value of the multi-functional spaces have proven invaluable.”
      In terms of materials, Hopp and his team used an abundance of white oak, which is found on the floors and walls. Only oil was used to protect the wood and enhance its grain.

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      Additional finishes in the apartment include lacquer, fabric, terrazzo, stone and metal.
      “Creative lighting strategies work as additional micro-gestures to make the space feel more functional and pleasurable,” the team added.
      The bathroom walls are filled with backlit shelvingOther small apartments with space-saving strategies include a micro apartment in Ecuador that features a central organizing element with hidden furniture, and a tiny London residence that has an elevated sleeping area wrapped in translucent panels that reference Japanese shoji screens.
      The photography is by Fei Liu.

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      Mid-century Melbourne apartment modernised with pistachio green kitchen

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      Architect Murray Barker and artist Esther Stewart worked together to retrofit this two-bedroom 1960s apartment in Melbourne’s Brunswick neighbourhood using colours and materials that pay homage to the original mid-century interior.When the current owners bought the walk-up apartment, it had been empty for 20 years and had its original decor including linoleum and carpet floors and salmon pink walls. The owners wanted to retain its character while updating the living spaces to suit modern life.
      Built in 1961, the 65-square-metre apartment is split into two zones with a living space and kitchen at the front on either side of the entrance and two bedrooms on either side of a bathroom at the rear.

      A skylight lets light into the kitchen

      “The apartment’s layout was typical of many apartments of this typology, with a clear division between living and private spaces and with frontage on two sides,” Barker told Dezeen.
      “We wanted to retain room divisions, but at the same time improve connections, extend sightlines and bring more natural light into the kitchen.”

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      The apartment’s original large windows provided ample natural light and effective cross ventilation. The owners felt that the existing kitchen, however, felt disconnected from the living room as the space was too confined to accommodate a dining table and lacked adequate natural light.
      To remedy this, Barker and Stewart reconfigured the plan to improve the connection between the living room and the kitchen.

      The Pistacho-coloured kitchen has a terrazzo floor
      The dividing walls between the two rooms were partially demolished and joinery elements were inserted to reorder circulation paths between the home’s central entrance, the reoriented kitchen and the living room.
      “We expanded the use of integrated joinery, considered existing proportions and details, and the use of high quality, robust but interesting materials,” said Murray.

      The interior of the cabinets is a rich terracotta colour
      The new kitchen layout has an L-shaped plan that is open to the living area and anchored by a custom-made steel frame table with a Rosa Alicante marble top and fixed banquette seating.
      Visible from the living room, a long kitchen countertop made from the same red marble as the table completes the L-shaped kitchen plan and incorporates a stove, oven and sink.

      Red marble was used across the work- and tabletops
      A skylight above the kitchen table lets sunlight into the space through thick glass roof tiles. The ceiling is insulated and the roof window is double-glazed to minimise additional heat gain and to retain winter warmth.
      Murray and Stewart selected the pistachio green colour for the joinery in a nod to the original 1960s-era kitchen that it replaced. Details include visible framing around doors and drawers and custom finger pulls. Sliding-pocket doors reveal a hidden appliance area in the pantry to hold a toaster, kettle and coffee machine.

      Barker and Stewart retained the apartment’s original 1960s bathroom
      The apartment’s bathroom is the 1960s original and features speckled flooring, dusty pink tiles and baby blue sanitaryware.
      “Each apartment in the block has a unique toilet, bath and sink set in contrasting colour palettes, in combination with unique terrazzo flooring in the bathroom,” Murray explained. “The interior materiality was specific and robust but enthusiastic and this was something we wished to explore and elaborate upon.”
      The terrazzo floor tiles that are used across the rest of the apartment were salvaged excess stock from a larger project and were chosen to complement the original floors.

      The apartment is housed in a typical red brick complex
      “These buildings are visually robust, but there is beauty in the material nuance of the brown brick and subtle ornamentation through the considered design of ordinary things,” he continued. “The original interior aesthetic was far from white walls and plain tiles.”
      Last year, London studio Archmongers renovated a duplex mid-century flat in one of the city’s most well-known housing estates, using shades of red, yellow and blue to complement the modernist material palette. Meanwhile in Rome, Italian architecture office La Macchina Studio renovated a 1950s apartment, revealing original terrazzo floors and adding bold colours.
      Photography is by Benjamin Hosking.

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      MWAI designs Mayfair apartment as if it were a hotel suite

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      From a mini-fridge to a folding desk and a concealed make-up mirror, this compact London apartment designed by local firm MWAI features a variety of space-saving solutions.Commissioned by a busy, professional client who works internationally, the architects were asked to transform a 37-square-metre, one-bedroom apartment in a Mayfair mansion block into a minimalist “pied-à-terre”.

      Top image: an open-plan area includes the kitchen, living room and workspace. Above: neutral colours were used throughout
      “We thought accommodating sleeping, living, dining and working in a 37-square-metre apartment while also delivering the feel of a spacious interior was a very challenging brief,” said the practice.
      “We decided we should not look at it like a residential project but rather like a hotel suite, where all functions are carefully and discreetly planned to provide a functional response to business and leisure travelling needs.”

      The apartment’s built-in storage includes a folding desk

      Finished in a palette of natural materials like wood and stone, the apartment features an abundance of bespoke, built-in storage.
      According to MWAI, the main challenge was to maximise the limited amount of useable space in the apartment. Restricted by sloping ceilings, the apartment had a poor existing layout and was in need of renovation.

      Walls in the bedroom are painted grey
      In order to create a more efficient footprint in the London apartment, the practice began by removing and replacing all of the walls, floors and ceilings.
      Particular attention was paid to minimising the footprint of the bathroom and kitchen by placing them into the centre of the plan, sandwiched between the living room and bedroom.

      The bathroom walls are finished in waterproof cement
      A wet room is now accessed from the bedroom, with a pivoting flush door used to separate the rooms.

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      The bathroom walls are clad in a waterproof cement polymer render, providing a textured finish that is enhanced by recessed lighting. Sleek industrial fixtures and sanitaryware were chosen to offset the textured walls.

      The kitchen conceals appliances and features sleek hardware
      To maximise floor space in the kitchen, the architects concealed units and equipment, including a mini-fridge, behind panels in the wall lining.
      A kitchen island accommodates the hob and oven and also doubles as a dining table.

      Light flooring runs throughout the apartment
      A wall of bespoke storage is built into the bedroom, including a make-up cabinet with a concealed mirror and clothes steamer.
      In the living room, custom-made cabinets with an integrated folding desk are installed along one wall and furnishings are kept to a minimum. A simple fireplace made from Vicenza stone acts as a focal point for the space.

      The stone fireplace is a focal point
      Other architecture firms that have created clever, space-saving solutions for compact apartments include Ukrainian firm Ater Architects, which hung curtains in place of walls in a Kyiv flat.
      In Madrid, Spanish studio Husos Arquitectos designed a 46-square-metre plywood-lined apartment that features a vertical garden and sleeping pod.
      Photography is by Billy Bolton.

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      Ater Architects uses blue curtains as walls in Kyiv apartment

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      Cobalt-blue curtains hang in place of walls in a small apartment in Kyiv renovated by Ukrainian architecture and interiors studio Ater Architects. Called EGR Apartment, the 65-square-metre space was cramped, featuring a compartmentalised layout with separate rooms connected by corridors. The owners, a  young couple, asked Ater Architects to transform it into a light and […] More