NEW ANGLE
A DUTCH interior architecture firm has taken a historic apartment and respectfully reinterpreted it for contemporary life with intuitive nods to the past.
A Dutch interior architecture firm has taken a historic apartment and respectfully reinterpreted it for contemporary life with intuitive nods to the past
The Schouwenhoek Penthouse on Amsterdam’s Apollolaan comprises elements that shouldn’t work together: rustic timber ceilings canopying pale French oak parquetry floors and, in between, boxy mid-century furnishings set against black mesh shelving, plush fur rugs and solid Brutalist concrete. It’s a lot, and yet it feels completely calm and centred as one piece of design. Trust the Dutch to get it right.
The apartment was designed and completed between 2017 and 2018 by Amsterdam’s Framework Studio. It is located on the fifth floor of an original 1916 apartment building designed by architect Philip Anne Warners, Holland’s forefather of thoughtfully designed multiple-occupancy housing. “Warners was the first to make ‘modern’ apartment buildings in Holland,” says Thomas Geerlings, Framework Studio’s creative director and the designer on this project. “He was one of the founders of the Amsterdamse School, a Dutch building style that uses brick-and-steel façades. It was very modern for its time.”
The one-bedroom penthouse seen today is not what existed in Warners’ lifetime, though. “The apartment was bought by our client with a layout typical of the time: a central corridor facing several small rooms,” says Geerlings. In order to create a space befitting the owners, a couple who work in fashion, a major redesign was necessary, and that meant opening up the small spaces, and knocking down walls to turn two apartments into one. “We stripped out the whole apartment and redesigned the layout,” says Geerlings. Left with an empty box, he and his team started from scratch.
Rather than challenge the apartment’s original aesthetic, the team at Framework Studio opted to honour it. “We’ve retained the space’s link to the Amsterdamse School by taking elements from the movement and re-elaborating them in a modern way,” says Geerlings. The ceiling feature that divides the spaces, the fishbone pattern in the flooring and the white plastered ceilings each pay homage to Amsterdamse School design, rather than offer a facsimile. “We wanted to give the feeling of authenticity, but without the falsification of history,” says Geerlings.
A sense of gentle flow leads you from the entrance and directly into the living area. Movement through the home is facilitated by one of the most striking additions to the apartment, a building within a building, custom designed by Framework Studio. “The centrally placed utility block — in which a guest bathroom, a kitchen and laundry are placed — gives the apartment a natural route, without feeling like a division made simply by walls,” says Geerlings. The apartment is so enormous, some 230 square metres, that this construction marries the spaces together, ridding it of the cavernous quality it may have had without it. The couple wanted not only to live within the spectacular, but also feel a softness and be at home.
The kitchen is constructed from hard-wearing Ceppo di Gré (a type of Italian stone), oak and powder-coated steel, all overlooked by an imposing floating concrete staircase. These materials might be perceived as the height of masculinity but highly decorative elements, in particular a plethora of furniture featuring nimbly woven structures, balance the austerity of hard stone. A muted palette throughout the apartment — off-white, cream and grey — neutralises and binds the spaces. “Our favourite room is definitely the living room, because of the amount of light that the double-height ceiling gives,” says Geerlings. “And [we love] the Brutalist wooden sideboard, a vintage piece from an unknown Belgian designer who was experimenting with this kind of design during the 1970s.”
Framework Studio not only did the interior architecture and design on this apartment but all of the interior decoration as well. Many of the elements are bespoke — like a giant round mirror in the bathroom, sunk into the wall and rising up behind mottled travertine fittings. “It gives such a nice glow,” says Geerlings. Custom objects are set against design classics, like inviting Togo chairs by Michel Ducaroy in 1973 in the living area. “The Togo chairs relax the space, they’re not too posh,” says Geerlings. “They fit the client like a glove — they reflect their standing in life.” From here, a double-sided fireplace links the lounge room with literature, where a little library is fitted with two retro-futurist Press Room chairs created by Gerrit Rietveld in 1958, all boxy and angular like something out of The Jetsons.
The high ceilings are one of Geerlings’ favourite features of the home. “The height of the living room ceiling is very uncommon in Dutch houses,” he says. “It is impractical and inefficient, and thus it is un-Dutch.” The ceilings are so tall that they allow for a ‘chill room’ up in the timber-lined arches. It’s what Geerlings describes as one of the apartment’s many “corners in which to nestle in with a book and a glass of wine.” It’s somewhere to escape to, if such flight were ever sought. As intimate and cosy as it is spacious, this is a home of disparate pieces but Geerlings has pressed them together with a touch so deft, that the joins seem to vanish from sight. framework.eu
“The height of the living room ceiling is very uncommon in Dutch houses. It is impractical and inefficient, and thus it is very un-Dutch”
THOMAS GEERLINGS
“We’ve retained the space’s link to the Amsterdamse School by taking elements from the movement and re-elaborating them in a modern way”
THOMAS GEERLINGS