Ester’s Apartment

EBA’s first apartment in the building totally transformed the original idea of the flexible loft by introducing a series of fixed and specific boxes made from rich materials and colors: white statuario marble, warm woods, deep pinks, jet blacks: all contrasted with the exposed concrete. While the ceilings were left as the underside of the prefabricated concrete structural members, the original bright blue epoxy was coated with a cool gray concrete topper.The idea is that the cool palette of the parallel planes of concrete offsets and contrasts with the warmer palette of color and material. And unlike the original open generic loft, rooms would be introduced of specific and different characters. For example, in contrast to the public spaces which are sandwiched between planes of concrete, the sleeping area is located on a raised platform near the windows where all surfaces, including ceiling and floor, are clad with warm oak – in panels, planks and slats. Inspiration for the wood sleeping box came from the traditional Japanese house where changes in room heights are used to differentiate public from private space.The apartment is inside one of the very first ground-up buildings built in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of East Berlin after the fall of the Wall. The apartment house, originally designed by Wolfram Popp, creates flexible and open lofts with raised platforms at the windows called estraden. The original material palette consisted of bright blue epoxy floors, wood exterior doors, metal grating and exposed concrete. EBA’s design completely transformed the generic open loft into a set of specific and richly material spaces.