Apartment for rent renovation
The assignment was to renovate a 115 year-old noble apartment in the heart of the city of San Sebastian, Spain, to transform it into an elegant and striking Airbnb apartment within a controlled budget.
The rooms were ample, the ceilings were 3,5m high and full of beautiful moldings and it was a full of light house. However, the poor state of it due to the lack of maintenance, the outdated decoration and the dark walls made the rooms look small and dull. Another critical point for the design challenge was that there had never been a proper kitchen before ( some of the noble houses of that time had the kitchen in the basements or in the servant´s area) and the location of the new one was quite determined to the new installations and plumbing.
The main design decision was to highlight the old ceiling moldings: it was decided to restore and paint the dining room´s ceiling in a bright green, achieving a surprisingly modern effect of the old ceiling and making it the central piece of the apartment´s new look. In the rest of the house´s rooms small hints of the same green were introduce to create a global concept of design, like in the bead headboards or in the entrance plinth.
The kitchen was made of pure black furniture with a light wooden counter to make contrasts and large format tiles: the tiles drawing follow no pattern and remind us of old fossils.
