Three Object Apartment

Located in a highly residential area, this modernist building had been abandoned for thirty years. The family who purchased the first-floor apartment saw it as a dwelling canvas—both on the first level and the pilotis level: a private, covered space without a defined program, and available for ad-hoc adaptation. This use of the pilotis inspired the design of the first-floor dwelling: a home prioritizing maximum flexibility and openness. The apartment was stripped back to its bones, revealing the external shell and the waffle slab ceiling, while introducing three medium-scale functional elements.

The renovation of the first-floor flat of this modernist building aimed to upgrade the interior space to an up-to-date apartment, whilst also serving as a study of unfinished architecture. In the process, together with the clients, we explored and experimented with an aesthetic fully tailored to the existing qualities of the site as acquired. The entire apartment was stripped back to its constituent elements: the concrete ceiling waffles in all rooms and the bush-hammered external concrete cladding were carefully exposed and restored. The internal marble floor was removed to be repurposed as terrazzo aggregate, and the cementitious mortar found behind the existing tiled walls in the bathrooms was retained as the final wall finish. Three floating, medium-scale functional objects were the only new elements introduced into a flexible and open-plan space, available to be adapted ad hoc by the users: a kitchen island/dining element, a storage block, and a cross formed by moving doors and partitions.

During construction of the apartment's shell, hidden layers were revealed and celebrated, in a process akin to archaeology. Concrete ceiling waffles were carefully exposed and restored in all rooms. The existing marble floor was removed and reused as terrazzo aggregate: we broke the salvaged terrazzo panels in situ at selected locations, retaining the fragments as they fell—freezing the moment of stone breaking. Cementitious mortar behind the bathroom’s tiled walls was retained as the final wall finish. Neutral colours and finishes on floors, walls, and ceilings were chosen to soften the building’s hard fabric. The balcony balustrade was left coated only in red oxide primer, referencing a work-in-progress site. In contrast, the materiality of the Three Objects was refined: the round kitchen island/dining table was clad in cotto tiles, referencing the Italian roots of the owner, encouraging the social cooking; the storage blocks were oak veneered, and the cross with its doors is MDF lacquered to reduce cost.