Photography: Amit Gosher
This apartment is located in a building allocated for conservation in Tel Aviv, and is home to a talented pianist who loves to entertain friends and host music nights in his home. The challenge was to create a flexible space, suitable for entertaining, that lends itself to a variety of hospitality scenarios and collaborative musical activities.
When we first saw the floor-plan, we were taken aback by the lack of flexibility in the flat, stemming from the shelter room (Obligatory in Israel), impossibly located in the center of the flat. After a few attempts, we found potential in the apartment, through the creation of an organizing cube.
The organizing cube: Peripheral furniture which boxes up the functions of kitchen, media, electricity, storage and a hidden door, leading to the private space of the house.
Assembly scheme showing the cube, arranging the hospitality and kitchen around it.
Section spread of the cube: the arranging element of the house.
From the kitchen's side, the box contains a work area, refrigerator and high pantry cabinets. This side of the cube is hidden from public space, according to the demand of the tenant who asked for a kitchen separated from the hospitality area.
In front of the cube's kitchen part, a dining table was designed. It allows a face to face meal or an added work surface by moving it on its axis.
Carpentry furniture embedded in walls (1)
A place for keys, a bag, letters, newspapers and coats was inserted into the walls of the foyer.
The grand piano stands against a basalt brick wall. Two light wooden boxes containing the pianist's music collection were embedded into the wall.
Furniture embedded in walls (2)
In the guest bathroom, instead of a conventional sink cabinet we've embedded a unique niche with a piece of carpentry furniture that encloses storage drawers, a sink, a tap from the wall, a large mirror, sunken lighting and concealed shelves.
The shelter room has been converted into a work room. a place to read, play and work on the computer. It stores an electric piano, a library, storage spaces and a work desk.
A strip window encircles the entire bedroom and prevented us to build a partition wall, offering a challenge: dealing with a bathroom without walls. Our basic assumption was that if the two rooms had such great continuity, we should try and challenge our paradigms on the customary tiled walls and introverted shower and toilet.
Bedroom Section
Bedroom Plan
A long, narrow furniture piece replaces the two traditional dressers on each side of the parents' bed. It continues inside the bathroom and changes its function, but not its character.
The bedroom cabinet creates a sealed partition for the intimate parts of the bathroom, and is surrounded by glass from all directions. Thus, there is a sense that the cabinet stands free from all sides in a continuous space , yet the bathroom intimacy remains.
The central element of the bedroom starts with the video system storage at the entrance, continuing to clothing storage and a recessed headboard, ending with a sink surface and bathroom.
A view of the rooftops of Tel Aviv accompanies the living room balcony.
