LUXE FOR LIFE
This apartment in the heart of Amsterdam’s historic south was part of a religious residence in the 19th century. Now, Dutch designer Odette Blum has transformed it into a sleek city retreat and a studio for creative collaborations.
This apartment in the heart of Amsterdam’s historic south was part of a religious residence in the 19th century. Now, Dutch designer Odette Blum has transformed it into a sleek city retreat and a studio for creative collaborations
This is where it all happens,” announces Odette Blum. “This is where I meet with everyone — the artists, the craftsmen and women. They do all the actual work.” The designer is talking about her Amsterdam pied-à-terre in a former deaconesses’ residency, which doubles as a base for her curatorial design projects and self-titled online concept store. Blum redesigned the luxe city apartment in close collaboration with architect Daniela Germone of Dis Studio. It is part of a late-19th-century complex that includes a now-defunct hospital and chapel and is located towards the end of the Van Eeghenstraat, which runs all the way along the infamous Vondelpark in the poshest part of town, Amsterdam South. From her window the designer looks out to Picasso’s Figure Découpée l’Oiseau ( The Bird) — an abstract flat sculpture in concrete better known as ‘ The Fish’ that’s also a famous Vondelpark beacon and meeting point. “This location was very important,” says Blum. “It is in the middle of the city but without all the noise and chaos. Instead it is very green and serene.” Whether in her apartment-cum-studio or her hybrid creative practice — which includes her new Humble Luxury range, finely crafted objects and accessories produced in partnership with master artisans around the globe — the balance between hard and soft, strong and vulnerable, is the underlying design principle of all Blum’s creative pursuits. “Beautiful things, soft things, are a consolation,” says Blum. “They allow you to be vulnerable, which is when you tap into your true strength. My work is about redefining luxury as what is precious and humble. It’s about things that have been shaped beyond perfection so they really touch you.” Blum hails from the east side of the Netherlands, which is revealed by a subtle Deventer dialect in her speech. There she lives with her husband, a successful businessman-turned-ecological farmer, in an estate surrounded by six hectares of woods and meadows dotted with Scottish Highland cattle. She has an office at home too but her apartment in Amsterdam is her own territory. “The energy of the convent suits me,” she says of her creative retreat, which was converted into luxury apartments after being saved in the mid-1980s, along with the hospital and chapel, by the city government. In 2014, Blum bought her third-floor space from a long-time inhabitant. “I stripped the entire apartment and brought it back to its original sober and quiet state,” says the designer, who added natural surfaces of wood and marble and sourced cast iron radiators and Bakelite light switches to echo the building’s original aesthetics. The pure lines and finest materials from the best, mostly Italian, manufacturers create an atmosphere of luxurious, quiet calm. ››
I stripped the entire apartment and brought it back to its original sober and quiet state
‹‹ Blum’s hard-meets-soft aesthetic can be seen in her juxtaposition of materials; floor-to-ceiling steel-and-glass doors custom designed by Dis Studio sit adjacent to a wall upholstered entirely in tactile, creamy linen. The rich, muted charcoal, sage and palest dogwood colours of the interior are the same as those developed for the renovation of the nearby Rijksmuseum by Dutch paint company, Sikkens. “I chose rich colours for the interior, which are also humble,” she says. “Colours that connect to what Odette Blum is about.” Artfully positioned throughout the apartment are unique handcrafted pieces including ‘Flax Ottoman’ by Dutch artist Christien Meindertsma for Thomas Eyck, a stool made of a single 140-metrelong strand of traditionally hand-spun and -twined Dutch flax. Then there’s the floor piece by artist Claudy Jongstra, which is hand-felted from the wool of the artist’s own flock of Drenthe Heath sheep and hand-dyed using flowers, roots, nuts and other traditional natural ingredients, some of which Jongstra grows in her own garden. These intensely personal and intricately crafted furnishings, many of which are the results of Blum’s artistic collaborations, echo the designer’s devotion to handcrafts as the ultimate expression of beauty and contemporary luxury. “We need to choose true beauty in earnest,” says Blum. “For me, luxury is not about being rich but about the ability to recognise what is precious in life.”
Visit odetteblum.com.
I chose rich colours for the interior, which are also humble