Lubetkin Apartment

With only 65 sqm available, the young clients required a number of unique additions to the two bed, high rise property including a bicycle storage and training area, a study, a versatile second bedroom and a casual eating space. The design sought to celebrate the subtle embedded structural framework, connecting to the identity of the building, stripping back areas to reveal original concrete beams, punching through a bedroom and living room wall and integrating timber clad adaptive furniture and bespoke metalwork to give warmth, colour and light to the apartment’s spaces and create beautiful and practical structures and forms, full of craft and expression of the human spirit. The project embraces low cost fabrication and utilises standard building materials throughout; this includes lower grade plywood, substrates as flooring, lightweight polycarbonate sheeting, acrylic and mirrors. Keeping within the budget, the intention was to form an aesthetic based on craft and material, as well as expose the merits of the existing structure, giving richness and warmth to its inhabitants. The rigidity of the original layout did not provide opportunity for new programmes and interaction, such as working from home, without spaces becoming convoluted or subdivided into smaller areas. With minimal demolition and limited intervention, the proposal addresses these problems by creating flexibility and adaptable rooms that lend and borrow both physical space and light to enable the apartment to be used in multiple ways as and when needed. Fundamental to the project was the removal of all gas services with the replacement of an electrical system which includes a heat battery and all electric heating; when combined with the owners' 100% renewable energy supplier's tariff the household's carbon footprint is negligible.