Rotterdam Apartment Renovation / Ulli Heckmann

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The 100sqm apartment had been renovated in the 80s and sadly lost all its former charm and decorative elements of the 30s that some of the neighbor’s flats still show. Yet nothing had been done to improve acoustical and thermal insulation to the upper floors and the basement.Most of the spaces have a double function and even though the downstairs shows a completely open plan reuniting the living room, dining area, and kitchen there is still room for privacy if needed. The tall kitchen cupboards double as a room divider separating the main space from a zone for example reading a book, inviting friends to stay over or simply drying the laundry without putting it in the middle of the living room.The upstairs is designed with a more secluded layout. Nevertheless, by making the master bedroom slightly oversized, it can also become like a more intimate second living room with space for instance for yoga, reading a book on the large window sill bench-like shelf or enjoying a bath in the bathtub. Also by leaving the ceiling-high door open in summer upstairs almost becomes an open-plan layout again. Only the walk-in-wardrobe and the bathroom remain hidden behind cupboard-like doors.After curing the apartment and stripping it of any interior elements besides the staircase and the location of the restroom we inversed the former layout of the place. The kitchen, dining, and living room, which had been on the upper floor, were moved downstairs to grant direct access to the garden and the water. Which meant placing the bedrooms and bathroom at the street level and increasing acoustical insulation to the upstairs neighbor.Text description provided by the architects.The apartment is situated in an area of WestRotterdam, which is called Delfshaven. It is part of an almost 200m long flat building from 1935 on a dike along the river Schie and consists of the ground floor and basically, a one-sided basement level that opens to the water.Most of the furniture is built of either plywood or MDF, which was then treated to obtain a more distinct look. For example, the upstairs cupboards in the corridor were dyed with an earl grey mixture before giving them a hard wax finish. For the walls, we used lime plaster – raw for the downstairs and with green pigments for the bedroom.