The loft, with 105 ㎡, is located in the south zone from Sao Paullo, in a strictly residential buildings neighborhood, basically from the 80 and 90 decade. For this reason we started from a traditional compartmentalized apartment with exaggerated number of divisions and closed rooms it related to its area.
The main challenge was to open the space, bring the sense of amplitude within the exiting structural limitations. In this sense, the owner, a young entrepreneur recently married was willing for profound changes and already felt attracted by the spatial characteristics of lofts as well as the contemporary aesthetic common in these cases.
The idea of a box with just a coating, burned cement, would bring the contemporary aspect and look like “clean” without amendments or interruptions and would be applied on all surfaces such as floors, walls and ceilings. A particular care has been taken into account in choosing the gray’s tone, which should be modern but not too cold and close by the natural cement’s tone. In the baths we used for the slabs the natural Oasis Blue limestone with a similar tone of cement, employed only as an alternative to cement, to be more appropriate for slabs and carved sinks.
For the owner a cold or too modern result wouldn’t please him, he searched an elegant atmosphere but also comfortable and “hot”. The suggestion of the office was the alliance of the cement and the natural wood in reddish chesnut brown tone to “heat up” the environment and that would add value in decorative point of view. In some places such as the entrance, dinning bench and the balcony seat, the Cumaru wood, a Brazilian’s hardwood with high resistance was used by rulers to make the wood “weigh” even more. Where the use of solid wood wasn’t viable either by weight or by the natural movement, we chose for the Pau Ferro sheet, a wood with enough personality and a similar design to the Jacaranda, one of the main wood used in furniture production peak in Brazil in the 50 or 60 decade, for example.
The furniture and interior design continues with the choice of textiles as the natural linen or the distressed leather and prioritizes the warm touch and comfort always against the coldness of the cement box. The end result is a loft without excess, spacious and extremely pleasant to live.