Magic Box
We radically transformed an apartment in a large open space with a magic box in the middle!
The living area contains the kitchen, while the bedroom a walk-in closet.
The interior renovation of this apartment located in Milan on the ground floor of a residential complex of the thirties start from the desire of the client to create an interior of high architectural quality despite a very bright awareness of a limited budget.
The situation was rather bad: crossed the entrance an endless corridor -over nine meters- ended against a blank wall, there two opposing doors gave the opportunity to get into the bedroom, exposed to the public street to the south, or in the living area with kitchenette, exposed to the north and the inner courtyard.
Soon it was decided to reverse the functions, bringing the living area to the sunniest exposure and giving instead to the room the quiet internal side.
While minimizing the walls demolitions, the layout of the house was subtly revolutionized.
Instead of two separate rooms, we created a unique open space with a central wooden volume: a magic box!
The side facing the living area contains the kitchen, while toward the bedroom we inserted a walk-in closet.
Through a big door it's possible to close the bedroom anytime, but in everyday use it remains open, valuing the double exposure of the apartment.
The Magic Box is a tailor made design furniture, but nevertheless rather low-cost.
It was mounted in a few days and consists of an iron frame (profiles 40x40 mm) coated with beech plywood panels (thickness 18 mm) whose linear joints were subsequently covered by a further iron frame (profiles 20 x 20 mm).
The kitchen is composed of Ikea items coated with thinner plywood panels, while the internal equipment of the wardrobe is worked out with the same steel profiles cutted and welded on-site.
During renovation works it was unveiled, under an ugly plastic floor, the originals cement hexagonal tiles. It wasn't easy to tame a flowery field that goes in conflict with the designed planimetry.
Thanks to a recently introduced material as the microcemento, indifferently applied above the screed or overlapping the cement tiles (final thickness <1.5 mm) we reached a compromise between the original layout idea and the unexpected construction outcrop.
The presence of the old cement tiles has influenced the project of the bathroom. There large slabs of Carrara marble and the coverings with microcemento of the seat in the shower and the washbasin console, create an atmosphere out of the trends.
