Boutique Studio Apartment is a project completed by HUE D.
The sleek and colorful residence is located in Singapore.
Boutique Studio Apartment by HUE D:
“The studio apartment, which is situated at a prime district of Singapore, belongs to a working professional. It has 2 rooms and a kitchen integrated with the Living, which views out towards the Mercedes Benz and BMW showroom buildings, which are fine architectural pieces in their own rights.
The Client has a long list of requirements. A larger Kitchen. A Dining area. A Living space. A Working area. Storage for collection of clothes and fashion accessories. Display for many collectable toys. Housing for a cat. And so on. In order to carve useful spaces out within the small area, studies has to be done on the plan and the sections of the interior spaces rigorously.
Other than the functional aspects to be met, we also notice the Client’s wish to live stylishly. Our proposal thus is to create an interior that is very much ’boutique’ hotel like. The apartment has to look modern, inviting, fun and maybe even a little funky.
For most parts of the apartment, we create full length and height cabinetry for TV, entertainment consoles and many other items so that most of the cluter can be kept away inside concealed doors. Reflective white surfaces are used on the facade of these cabinets to make the space look brighter and larger.
After this is done, we carve out recesses to house the display items: TV, library of Cds and collectable toys. A retro funky sofa is ‘slotted’ under a row of cabinets which was clad in mirror. The same row of tall cabinets also neatly hide the housing for the client’s pet cat.
These recesses are then clad or painted in bursting colours of lime green, metallic blue and luminous pink. These ‘dabbings’ on the white canvas with burst of colours create hip visual factor while making the space look bigger than it really is.
An exception to this rule is a volume of book cabinet in lime green that juts out high from a wall near the windows. This allows a person to sit below it to use the study table. A mirror is positioned under the suspended cabinet to give it a ‘floating’ illusion, as well as to make the study space look wider. Customised sliding screens with small hexagons are designed and put in place to prevent the cat from jumping through the external windows. While functional, this adds another layer of visual interest to the interiors.
The original kitchen already has a small hood and hob, but the client fnds it impractical. Thus we added a ‘new’ wing to the existing kitchen, with new Bosch ceiling mounted hood and full functioned hobs.
An ‘extendable’ table from Franc Franc is positioned beside this new kitchen ‘wing’, to take full advantage of the proximity for quick serving of food. A Louis Poulsen LC Shuters lamp is positioned above the table, creating a soft and gentle ambience for a private dining experience. Philippe Starck La Boheme chairs in various hues can be used for both the dining and study tables. And they can be used as coffee tables at the Living when necessary. The client brought in an Eames Elephant as visual marker, and perhaps as a ‘companion’ toy for the cat.
In the MasterRoom, we designed a headboard for the bed in a similar design language. Pockets of hues contrast with the reflective white cabinets and are positioned to display different collectible soft toys. The rest of the headboard can be used as concealed storages. The two vertical sides of the headboard are slanted inwards, so that there can be more space for maintenance on the bay-window. This detailing also gives the headboard a ‘paper-thin’ look as the width of it cannot be seen at most angles where you look at the headboard. A pair of green Ferruccio Laviani Take as bedside lamps anchored the look.
The client requires so much storage for apparel and other fashion accessories that we decided to make a bold design statement for the wardrobes and perhaps to derive a new typology for wardrobe. Typically, wardrobes are designed as a single item, a single volume. For this project, we decide to ‘break’ this single volume down into different parts.
These parts are expressed as different volumes, much like storage chests, stacked neatly one above another or placed side by side. The result is an original and striking ‘collage’ that somewhat resembles an art installation of storage trunks or a funky fashion boutique or something in between.”
Photos courtesy of HUE D
