From Stone to Home - Beta Competition
Interior space

From Stone to Home

Project description

The interior design project is thought for an apartment in a historical building in Timișoara, built around the 1900s. What makes this project special is the fact that it is my personal apartment, therefore, it involved a complex designing process, in a variaty of aspects. Its plan is similar to the historic buildings from this period, with the living rooms opening towards the main facade, and the access hall and kitchen communicating with the staircase hall. The apartment also has a 3rd room, independent of it, a room that functioned in the past as a shared bathroom. The design project involved considerable work, with the preservation of the original configuration of the apartment and the reconfiguration of the relationships between the spaces. In the initial configuration, access to the bedroom was through the kitchen, which was moved in relation to the living area. The layout concept was based on the transformation of an outdated apartment into a bright, open and warm space, with spaces in dialogue and at the same time with consideration for the past. The space configuration had to be airy enough, to use the available space efficiently and to be sustainable at the same time, emphasizing the reuse of as many elements as possible from the old apartment. Thus, many of the pieces of furniture were made from materials recovered during the renovation. The chest of drawers in the living room was made from the wooden beams recovered with the closing of the door gap between the kitchen and the living room, and the brick recovered from the former wall between the bathrooms was used to build the door gap. This gap was closed with a row of bricks, resulting in a niche that recalls the existence of the kitchen-bedroom relationship. The chandeliers were made from branches, and some decorative objects from recycled paper. The generous height of the rooms was used to the maximum, by creating lofts for the sleeping areas in the bedroom, respectively the 3rd room. A smart home system and a ventilation system with heat recovery have also been integrated, which in turn support the concept of sustainability. In the design process, a series of tools were used such as materiality, through the use of wood of different essences, recycled paper and metal, respectively the use of a white background as an exhibition space; object design as sustainability in architecture, honesty to the past and experiment at the same time; functionality integrated into a simple, honest, coherent and airy design.

Author's presentation text

Alexandra Martea is an architect and she finished her studies in 2017, at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in Timișoara. She currently works in the same city, and she’s always looking for creative solutions for a better way of learning and living.