The project was to refubirsh and transform an apartment in a building built early 1900's and located in Strasbourg's city center. The tumbledown apartment benefits from a great location at corner and a good sunlight exposition.

The clients, both of them doctors, must adapt to their unique lifestyles to meet with their hospital's night watches duties. The project tooks into account this professional specifity.

We developped the idea to create a place that is relaxing, autonomous, open and providing isolation to not to disturb each other rest time while allowing them to live together harmoniously.

This corner apartment dual aspect has three facades. One of them opens onto a peacefull courtyard. Traditionally, bathroom and kitchen benefited of this courtyard whereas major rooms where opened along the avenues nowadays noisy.

As a result, the project's core idea was to reverse bathroom and kitchen to make sure that the main bedroom enjoys the courtyard. Bathroom and dressing room have been externalized from the night space to guarantee autonomy. In addition, partition walls were delete to enhance light and perspective.

The main living space is built around three wood elements : a full height and central cabinet that ensures delimitation with intimate spaces. An italian's style kitchen in corner leans against the windows and defines dining space. And a low and linear library highlights the living room. This wood set builds a spatial and sensorial continuum, isolating and unifying. To emphasize this continuum, the wall, component of the dressing room and the bathroom becomes a giant mirror, a backdrop highlighting the space, perspective and light.

The project seeks to offer a minimalist atmosphere. The number of used materials is deliberately restricted. Okoume's wood comes in a variety of forms and echoes of the existing larch wood parquet by matching the color and veining. The bathroom is all tiled in a light grey porcelain. Those are the only two materials. Everything else is abstraction and whiteness offering a calm and cosy place. The only sound that might disturb the achieved plenitude is the sound the library's sliding panels, a sonorous wink to their Asian memories.

Material Used:

1. Okoume wood