Designers Asya Savelyeva and Victoria Sidorova designed an apartment in a historic apartment building. The building in the very heart of the city was erected in 1911 in the Art Nouveau style. “We were very inspired by our first visit. The apartment initially had great potential, but, as often happens with old buildings, it was not in the best condition,” says Asya. “It has preserved three large glazed stoves, beautiful stucco moldings, original wooden windows, window sills, and a hundred-year-old oak parquet in one of the rooms. Everything required restoration, but the customers were ready for this.”
“The apartment consisted of three separate spacious, bright rooms, and its total area was 120 square meters. With these initial data, all we had to do was distribute the rooms by function, allocate a dressing-storage area at the entrance, and organize the bathrooms. The apartment is double-sided, with a load-bearing wall running through the middle. There was an inconspicuous narrow opening in it that led to the main space of the kitchen-living room. We embroidered it and highlighted it with terracotta color.”
“We tried to work delicately with the original data. We did not set ourselves the task of making perfectly straight walls, and patches appeared on the restored wooden windows and window sills, but this does not scare anyone; on the contrary, it adds value to the space. The project is imbued with the ideas of inheritance, preservation of historical memory and connection between generations.”
“The range of shades was set by the rich and at the same time calm tones of the glazed tiles of the stoves. We emphasized the design of the stucco molding by making it a shade lighter than the walls of the apartment. The baseboards and doors became a little darker. The project has many similar background shades, which are complemented by rich dark tones – terracotta, green on the kitchen backsplash and blue in the bathroom.”
“The project contains many objects and things brought from trips: armchairs, Viennese chairs, lamps – they were looked for in vintage stores, restored, and upholstered with new fabrics. The carpet came from Georgia, and the carpentry was made according to our sketches by Space Factory. The dining table was ordered from Lagom, the bed was found on Divan.ru, the wooden coffee table in the living room and bedside tables were found at La Redoute, and the paper lampshades were found at Hay. Among the decorative items, it is worth noting a vase in the dining room from Dum Keramik and a painting in the bedroom by Nikita Orlov, all from Design Dealer, as well as a mobile made from recycled plastic from Mononoke.”
“I think the most difficult decision was the restoration. Antique stoves were dismantled and taken away, and then reassembled on site. The finishing materials are as authentic as possible to the apartment – in the wet areas, there are metlakh tiles with a classic pattern from the Topcer factory everywhere. Oak parquet “English herringbone” from Finex was selected in size and color to match the existing historical one. We waited a very long time for the restoration of double wooden windows with window sills. They wanted to restore the doors as well, but in the end they made new ones: they took measurements from the panels, drew out the profile of the casing and heel. I am glad that in this project we managed to harmoniously combine the old and the new. When I look at the photos from the shoot, it seems like it’s always been like this!”
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