L-A-V Apartment

Athens, Greece

Date: 2023

Location: Athens, Greece

Size: 85m2

Type: Renovation

Program: Private Apartment

Status: Completed

L-A-V Apartment is a two-bedroom apartment with a large balcony in the center of Athens, Greece. The apartment is located on the 5th floor of a building constructed in 1964. The goal of the project was to radically renovate the space and transform it into a vibrant flat for a young woman.

The original state of the apartment had two bedrooms, a small isolated kitchen, a storage room, a bathroom, a living room and a couple of corridors that interrupted the freedom of movement and precluded the interaction between spaces. The existing facilities were outdated and there was an immediate need for improvement. The main axis of the renovation was to reorganize the distribution of the apartment by maximizing and unifying the common areas and rotating all them towards the terrace that faces the South to make the most of the natural light.

 As soon as someone enters the space, they face a wooden piece of furniture underneath a window. This is the apartment’s study area with a long desk and a hidden shoe rack combined into one single object. Studying is an activity that occupies a lot of the resident’s time so it was necessary to create a space suitable for long hours focusing and working.

One of the main points for the intervention is the kitchen. The architects decided to demolish the walls of one of the previous bedrooms and move the kitchen there to enhance the connection with the other gathering spaces such as the dining area and the living room. This placement not only enlarges the kitchen space but also provides it with direct access to the terrace to make it easier for the resident to organize dinner parties on the balcony when the weather permits. A pink island made of Roso Portogallo marble dominates the space and is surrounded by white cabinets made of wood. As the new kitchen unfolds towards the other common areas of the apartment and the terrace, it becomes a place where food preparation is combined with social interaction.

Apart from some necessary demolitions, the architects sought to reuse the existing walls of the building. They also decided to divide the original, long bathroom into two smaller ones. In that way the master bedroom, which remains in the same place as in the original layout, acquires an en suite bathroom. The former small kitchen room has been united with the storage room and they have been transformed into a guest room to host the resident’s friends and family. For both the bedrooms, playful headrests that serve as a display of personal objects and decorative items have been designed.