This apartment is located in a building allocated for conservation in Tel Aviv, and is home to a talented pianist who loves to entertain friends and host music nights in his home. The challenge was to create a flexible space, suitable for entertaining, that lends itself to a variety of hospitality scenarios and collaborative musical activities.
Project Name: The Pianist’s Home
Studio Name: XS Studio for compact design
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Photography: Amit Gosher
Project size: 97 m2
Completion date: 2017|
Building levels: 1
When we first saw the floor-plan, we were taken aback by the lack of flexibility in the flat, stemming from the shelter room (Obligatory in Israel), impossibly located in the center of the flat.
After a few attempts, we found potential in the apartment, through the creation of an organizing cube: Peripheral furniture which boxes up the functions of kitchen, media, electricity, storage and a hidden door, leading to the private space of the house.
From the kitchen’s side, the box contains a work area, refrigerator and high pantry cabinets. This side of the cube is hidden from public space, according to the demand of the tenant who asked for a kitchen separated from the hospitality area. In front of the cube’s kitchen part, a dining table/counter was designed. It allows a face to face meal or an added work surface by moving it on its axis.
In the bedroom, a strip window encircles the entire space which prevented us to build a partition wall, offering a challenge: dealing with a bathroom without walls. Our basic assumption was that if the two rooms had such great continuity, we should try and challenge our paradigms on the customary tiled walls and introverted shower and toilet.
A long, narrow furniture piece replaces the two traditional dressers on each side of the pianist’s bed. It continues inside the bathroom and changes its function, but not its character. The bedroom cabinet creates a sealed partition for the intimate parts of the bathroom, and is surrounded by glass from all directions. Thus, there is a sense that the cabinet stands free from all sides in a continuous space , yet the bathroom intimacy remains.
