Project Name: Sympathy Apartment
Architecture: Lez Arquitetura
Lead Architect: Gabriella Chiarelli
Design Team: Marianna Resende
Location: Brasilia, Brazil
Area: 44 m²
Year: 2019
Photo Credits: Júlia Tótoli
The Sympathy Apartment is a 44m² duplex located in BrasÃlia, Brazil. The owners are a friendly and receptive young couple who love to cook and gather friends at home. They asked us to rethink the apartment’s spaces to fit all the equipment and furniture they wished to have. Ampleness and integration are the words that describe the new home. In the original design, the mezzanine occupied half of the upper floor.
We decided to extend it to the end, increasing its area and leaving the lower floor entirely for social use. Through the proposed integration between the floors, the project optimizes and proposes different uses for each one. The choice of timeless materials and colors such as wood, gray and fendi tones provide a warm and pleasant atmosphere. In addition, they unify the language adopted in the apartment.
The furniture delimits the circulation of the social area. On one side, a bookcase was designed in wood and metalwork to be a visually light element that includes TV equipment, beer, cellars, beer cooler, ice maker and coffee makers. On the other side, the space below the stairs was used to fit the refrigerator, the washer and dryer and a chest to store larger items, following the alignment of the kitchen counter. The resulting space between these elements allowed the placement of a sofa and a dining table with four seats.
To minimize costs and avoid waste, we took advantage of the existing staircase structure, changing only its color to harmonize with the others used in the project. When going upstairs, we see a gray volume that delimits and highlights the bathroom area. The lateral closure is made of an aluminum frame with a mixture of two types of glass for privacy and to allow natural light into the bathroom, which originally was closed.
We covered all the bathroom walls with graphite porcelain and the carved countertop was made in black ‘São Gabriel’ granite with a brushed finish, to take the idea of gray volume also inside the bathroom. Thus, the upper floor, now with twice as much space, accommodates the intimate part of the apartment, including the master bedroom, office and closet.
