Paulo Afonso’s apartment is full of affectionate memories, and makes it a home full of history of friendship and love. An old building in the Santo Antônio neighborhood, in Belo Horizonte, was here that I came to live when I left the interior to study architecture in the capital.
Project Name: Apartamento Paulo Afonso
Studio Name: Pedro Haruf Arquiteto
Project size: 77 m2
Completion date: 2019
Building levels: 1
Location: Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Photography: Dentro Fotografia
Some time later, I moved to another apartment in the same building, and then, Dani came with a brother to live in the apartment that was vacant. We were studying together at the architecture school, we were already friends, from then on the friendship only grew, she had the key to my apartment to go and drink with her friends, because her fridge had not arrived yet, and I would call asking if I had lunch for one more!
After a while she went to live in Spain, and when she returned, she moved out of the building. And I, as soon as I graduated, also moved, and life was happening. After 8 years, I returned to my original address in Belo Horizonte, in the third apartment where I would live in the same building. It was my destiny to be a “The Paul Street Boys” as in the Hungarian novel Ferenc Molnár that marked my childhood.
In that time, after comings and goings, encounters and mismatches, hits and misses, my friendship with Dani, full of love, turns into a relationship. For my luck and happiness, I marry my best friend! She goes back to Paulo Afonso’s little building, but this time to live together. We live in a rented apartment, but the apartment would nevertheless not have our identity, and that is how we did a project with four hands, full of affection and love.
As we could not invest in a major renovation, as we are not the owners of the property, we decided to adopt an unusual painting, in a way, a diagrammatic, architectural painting. A strip of red paint marks the circulation and in the bathroom, the strong yellow, highlights the original floor in hexagonal hydraulic tile of the same color.
The paintings, are simple and possible reforms for rented apartments, allow us to live in a space with personality, without making costly changes.
We always like objects, and we carry with us things that remind us of trips, family and the work of friends and people we admire. The apartment, even small is full of it, our collection of paintings and objects, are works of friends, we have been gathering over time, Lucas Torres, Thales Pimenta, Front Facade, 45 Jelly Beans, André Ferri, Regina Misk, Cultivated at Home, Paulo Neves, Alva Design are examples among many.
It is a privilege to be able to live in a house full of these works, we have an apartment always full of friends, and we have many affection stories to tell. In addition to the friends we bring together, we live with several prototypes of the products I have developed over the last few years, the MFSD Sofa, Ide Armchair, Cobogó and Fragment Bench, Maria Lamp, Eufémia Table and others are in the house.
In addition to these, still classic furniture times like the chairs and lamp Jean Prouvé and the rocking chair of the couple Ray and Charles Eames. It completes the furniture, a beautiful armchair from the 1950s, in rosewood, re-upholstered in knitting by the talented Regina Misk.
Finally, another important collection that we added when we decided to live together, were our plants, the apartment is full of green, Costa de Adão, Guaimbê, Cactos, Jiboia, and several species live together with us in the little building on Paulo Afonso Street.
