Small spaces: the best inspiration for minimalist style

When you live in a small apartment, less makes a good impression in your home. Who is this small spacesWe are sure that you will find the best inspiration to recreate it in your next project. Small spaces live in minimalist style!

70 m² Metallic and woody tones

Located on Quai de Valmy overlooking the Saint-Martin Canal, the apartment has just been bought by Meghedi Simonian and Houssem Kanaan, founders of Kann Design, and is very busy. “We didn’t fall in love with the apartment, that’s obvious. It was very decorated, but it doesn’t look like it does now,” they say with some amusement. We fell in love with the site. We’ve lived in the neighborhood for a long time and know this 80’s building very well. So it took a lot of imagination for the publisher/producing couple to show themselves and say ‘Come on! Closing off a room, streamlining the kitchen, circulation is never questioned in this 1980s building, where everything is streamlined without wasting space.

The real surprise is in the materials. The parquet has been removed and the walls have been polished to show Gravel cement floorWhich Maghidi Simonian and Hossam Kanaan decided to keep. “With the gravel inside, it’s not a clay floor, but we liked its metal, especially since the heating is through the floor.” The same goes for the concrete walls too, which reinforce the metallic aspect the couple wanted from the start, and like to contrast that rough-hewn aspect with custom-designed and built-in furniture.

“We wanted a dialogue between metal and wood. Okoume, present in the living room and in both bedrooms, where full-height cabinets with wood handles open in simple vertical trim.” Just like the doors of the primary storage units in the kitchen, which are in turn used for another finish in the bathroom.” The couple cultivates the repetition of lines and materials even in the furniture, with a single chair model that can be followed from the dining room to the children’s room – except for the Charles Pollock chair in the parents’ room and the Serener chair in the kids’ room—”We both love simple things, there’s a real elegance in the modesty of forms. “

old charm and Art Nouveau in 50 m²

It was a small apartment in its original condition, explains Cyrielle Benaïm of Bän Architecture. For one person working remotely, including a desk in a separate location. For this reason, the architect moved the kitchen into the living room, to make it more welcoming, and created a second day office in its place. The new central part of the apartment integrates the bathroom, which can be accessed from both the bedroom and the hallway, and the office space, open to the bedroom thanks to a glass panel on the worktop. The modified structure facilitates circulation and allows natural light to enter the office.

The building after the musical era. In the new living space, Cyrielle Benam took care to enhance the eaves and bDazzling windowwhich gives the place character: “We’re into foliage on the street, so we had to open up the room and invite the outside in through bow windowvery rare in this kind of space.” Walls, like everyone else from the small section, has several setbacks, and the architect took advantage of this to create a dining area with a circular bench. The friezes that have been preserved stand out when some parapets were removed and some fine ceilings were carved, in remembrance of the ancient plan.

55 m² in harmony and perspective

for this small section, Accessed by a small interior spiral staircase, we had to contend with a really tight space and one constraint: creating a relatively large bedroom, living room, kitchen for the size of the apartment, and bathroom. “There was very little light at first, so we made a gazebo on one side,” explains interior designer Delphine Maumot. “Then, because the space is so narrow and so long, we develop a bedroom-and-cocoon spirit.” Because it’s about getting a sense of space despite the unusual arrangement of this 55 square meter apartment in two parts: the entrance and its brushed metal staircase, then the living room upstairs. Thus, everything was created to measure and designed in curves to soften lines, providing as much roundness and softness as possible to counteract the complex fabric that had to be worn.

A tall wooden cabinet joins the successive spaces, crossing the apartment from the bedroom into the kitchen, incorporating the sofa and storage furniture before becoming a study. This strong visual element creates a transversal line like a strip of light oak that runs the length of the space, like the interior of a ship. In this sense, the arched gates are a reference to the earlier design, which used a nautical metaphor with rounded gates at the top and bottom. The two round arches in front of the stairs have been preserved to create symmetry and perspective from the sofa.

Small house 27 square meters

This little house was my main residence, Buy, first investment,” says young architect Marco Vieira of this one-story garden-level studio. I did the work with Four Hands as a DIY project, great economy of means and a good opportunity to encounter realization after design. Looking back, one can see the scale of the task at hand: combining the shed and the garage On one floor with a few openings – blocks of glass and a main door -, a north facade, and the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings… and take into account only what the human hand can do, since the work will be done by two persons, and the only access for tools and materials will be Stone door only two feet wide.

In addition, the limitation of two-room housing with a kitchen, bathroom and separate bedroom of 27 square meters seems to be completely surmountable. The architect makes the space strive to separate without closing. This is the sense of asymmetry maintained between the living room and the kitchen, or the wardrobe block created to divide the bedroom and living room, but which does not reach the ceiling. “I created two bedrooms, one private, which is the bedroom, and one more open to the dining room.” Regarding the openings, Marco Vieira placed the windows in the upper part of the bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen, allowing one to see in without being seen and, in the case of the kitchen, also performing a non-technical ventilation function. . In the dining room and living room, although the glass is similar in size, the fixed wood element creates a geometry reminiscent of the installations of Louis Carré or Alvar Aalto, who worked with full-width window installations. The electric shutter has a motor built into the front, an aesthetic concern that Marco Vieira never lost sight of.

65 m² Turned into a dream place

In a pretty neighborhood in Paris, architect and designer Martin Massy has been commissioned to completely redesign a painter’s studio. The distribution, the partitions, the location of the bathrooms … The aim was to fully open the spaces in this interior, divided into two rooms, separated by a load-bearing wall containing chimney ducts, and therefore untouchable. “We decided to have the living room, dining room and kitchen in a large room at the back, all open plan, with the kitchen set along the left wall, with low cupboards to avoid imposing a presence in the room.” Large storage columns are integrated into the walls as if they were part of it, And the long row of wooden elements allows you to open the view and hide its functionality as much as possible.

In this new organization, the first space, paradoxically, again became the night area. To reduce the feeling of having to go through the bedroom to get to the living room, the architect designed an office unit whose shelves define the space as half corridor and half office, shielding the bedroom itself, which is visually forgotten. The shelves and their rounded ends are somewhat evocative Modern style art decoAnd Reinforced by the use of a cream-coloured lacquer combined with the same wood used in the design of the worktop for the office: stained oak, like parquet. In the choice of materials, Martin Massé favors quality over quantity, and the wood and waxed concrete act as reminders from room to room. In the kitchen, the sideboard and shelf are made of waxed concrete, which sits like a bar on the floor in front of the stained oak base units. “The desired impression is that of waxed cement rising above the wall…”, says the cyclorama.

The article was originally published in advertisement France.