Atelier Caracas imbues condominium in Caracas with Eighties industrial edge
Interiors studio Atelier Caracas has introduced industrial influences and offbeat supplies into this condominium in Caracas, designed across the restrictions posed by Venezuela’s latest political and financial disaster.
Set within the capital’s Campo Alegre district, Apartamento N.1 belongs to a relative of Atelier Caracas co-founder Julio Kowalenko, who gave the studio a uncommon carte blanche for the renovation of the 400-square-metre inside.
“He is a company, conventional Oxford kind of man,” the duo defined.
“We stated to ourselves, there are two methods through which we are able to method this venture,” they added. “We may both play it secure or go nuts.”
In the end, Kowalenko and his co-founder Rodrigo Armas used the chance to experiment with making use of industrial design ideas at an architectural scale and enhanced the condominium’s loft-like qualities in a nod to the structure of Eighties Los Angeles.
“We have all the time been fascinated with a kind of robotic, mechanical aesthetic that accompanies 80s LA structure,” the studio stated.
“This in style mechanics method, as we name it, could be seen within the early works of Frank Gehry and afterward within the experimental homes and appendixes of Eric Owen Moss and Morphosis amongst others,” the duo added.
“There’s a finesse on this artisanal slash industrial method, which we all the time wish to pay homage to in our designs.”
These influences are seen most clearly throughout the house’s experimental materials palette.
The studio determined to fully expose the uncooked concrete slab construction of the ceiling, celebrating it with a textural end relatively than hiding it away.
The duo averted using pre-fabricated elements, as an alternative rigorously designing the vast majority of the weather themselves.
To protect the integrity and ease of the ceiling, the lighting is mounted on a black-coated perforated steel construction – a reference to the Eighties aesthetic and custom-designed for this condominium by Atelier Caracas.
The studio additionally utilised the identical perforated sheet steel to create numerous versatile room dividers that break up the largely open-plan area.
Set on wheels and hooked up to the ceiling by way of matching rails, they are often simply moved round to separate the kitchen from the residing areas.
“Microperforated sheet appeared a intelligent choice to generate each permeable and ephemeral separations between non-public and public areas throughout the condominium,” Atelier Caracas stated.
The early levels of the condominium’s design kicked off in 2017 when Venezuela confronted intersecting financial and constitutional crises.
Inevitably, Atelier Caracas says this “troublesome interval of turmoil” additionally impacted the supply of supplies.
“There was a shortage, which in flip led the studio to a endless investigation on how what was accessible could possibly be used otherwise,” the duo stated. “The principle objective was to make high-end structure with less complicated supplies.”
The straightforward white terrazzo ground – used nearly all over the place throughout the condominium – was produced on-site and chosen for its cooling properties within the metropolis’s tropical local weather.
“Even in excessive temperatures, it stays recent and cooled,” the studio stated. “Additionally, the reflective high quality of this materials was a key issue for bathing the areas with the pure daylight coming from the home windows.”
The kitchen is fronted with unfinished picket panels, adorned solely with geometric cutouts that double up as door handles.
In the meantime, the wall that borders the lounge is completed in terracotta flooring tiles from a pool provide retailer.
“Any such terracotta is normally discovered on pool terraces and public areas of middle-class Venezuelan residences,” Atelier Caracas defined. “These days it is thought-about to be a kitsch or outdated materials.”
“Distinction between refined and low-tech supplies can generate new narratives on what luxurious could be. We consider that luxurious lies in the best way folks inhabit their areas, and never within the variety of flamboyant finishes.”
When it comes to line and kind, the condominium playfully mixes linear grids and diagonals with rounded corners and arches.
“Monotony and routine can, generally, trigger a stagnant state of contentment that we wish to disturb via our designs,” the studio stated.
“We wish to suppose that structure must be uncomfortable in some kind of method, by pushing folks out of their consolation zone, one can actually redefine people’ relation to design.”
This identical philosophy additionally impressed one of many studio’s earlier tasks in Caracas – a day spa modelled on Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A House Odyssey.
The pictures is by Outer Imaginative and prescient.
