Project Name: Apartment in the Jordaan District
Architects: Studio Woods
Project team: Joanna Kregiel-Vereecke
Location: Jordaan, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Project images: Michal Suskiewicz
Studio Woods designed the interior of a two-storey apartment. The 87-square-meter venue is located in the picturesque, bohemian Jordaan district of Amsterdam in a typical brick townhouse from 1863. The architect used and fully emphasized the qualities of the interior.
Living room
The wish of the owners was to completely change the interior and make the apartment a space that would express and represent them. Their new home was supposed to be modern, colorful, but still authentic. Clients dreamed of reusing or even accentuating the original elements of the building and interior. That’s where the idea to expose the 19th-century brick wall in the living room came from.
Joanna and her clients did not want to fill holes after old electric sockets and other elements in this wall, because it shows the history of this place. This wall creates a cozy atmosphere in the living room and provides a background for contemporary and post-war restored furniture.
Kitchen and toilet
The kitchen area and the adjacent toilet have also undergone a total metamorphosis. The size of the toilet has been significantly reduced (it was 2,5m long before!). In the space that was obtained in this way, Joanna designed cabinets accessible from the kitchen side. As a result, investors gained more valuable storage space. The kitchen gained a modern look thanks to original color accents such as cobalt sockets, pink tiles and matching cobalt grout. There were also more classic elements used in the design, such as mosaic tiles on the floor.
Between the traditional hexagonal forms, the architect introduced colorful small rectangle tiles. Thanks to that, traditional forms were combined with modernity of this colorful interior.
The architect was very keen on using these particular tiles. They were brought to the Netherlands by a Polish company. In addition to the kitchen, the toilet was renovated in a similar style, with pink walls and… the ceiling! The result resembles geometric paintings from Mondriaan.
Bathroom and bedroom
Studio Woods came across a surprising solution in the bathroom. The apartment has a terrace on the roof, but the only access to it was in the middle of the bathroom… Amsterdam surprises with the wealth of solutions! It was not the most convenient solution, especially when there were guests in the house.
The architect decided to divide the old bathroom into two rooms – a new, smaller bathroom and a utility room, which now also has a function of a hall. In the utility passage room you can find access to the roof terrace. In the new bathroom there were also hexagonal tiles used, but of a different type and shape. I am glad that we managed to fit a bath and a shower there, even though the bathroom has been reduced in its size.
The master bedroom has been enlarged by taking a bit of space from the adjacent office room. As a result, owners gained space for a large wardrobe accessible from the bedroom.
All external walls of the apartment have been insulated (on a wooden frame from the inside) to increase the comfort of living. It was not possible to insulate the facade from the outside because of the preservation regulations of old Amsterdam facades. The entire ventilation system has also been modernized by adding mechanical ventilation, which takes care of the quality of the air inside the apartment.
A word from the architect ‘It was definitely a challenging but fascinating journey that I took with my clients. Working on the project in Jordaan was worth all the effort. I am delighted to see that my clients have found a new home that expresses them and that they now live happily there with their two cats. This makes me proud of the end result.’
