A compact space with thirty years’ history as a storage unit is now a sleek, modern apartment outfitted with everything a single occupant needs with the addition of a built-in bed platform with storage. Architect Karin Matz purchased the unit in a state of total disarray, as the previous owner had begun a renovation in the 1980s that was never completed. When she began, it was a mess of peeling wallpaper, no electricity and “a bathroom only with signs of rats as inhabitants.”
The new architectural volume consists mostly of IKEA kitchen units, extended beyond the food preparation space to form a storage-filled platform for the raised bed. A small void under the bed offers a closet space, and a glass partition gives the little loft a sense of separation from the kitchen.
Aside from the bathroom, which was modernized, the rest of the apartment has been left virtually as Matz found it, with all surfaces remaining the way they’ve looked for the past 20 years. The rough, weathered surfaces of the walls contrast with the smooth new wood of the floors and furniture.
Says Matz, “In a city like Stockholm with enormous housing shortage and with every square meter increasing in price by the minute, this story was somehow impossible to understand and resist. The finished apartment is the result of a fascination for this; a try to let the previous layers and stories of a space live on and at the same time fill the requirements for the new story that will take place.”
