Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Stage: Completed project
Area: 300 sq.m.
Team: Ivanna Gaidarzhy, Anastasiia Abravitova, Yuliia Storozheva, Sergii Plinokos, Maksym Iuriichuk. Sivak Dmytro
Year: 2018-2026
Photo: Yevhenii Avramenko
The project began eight years ago, and we had almost given up hope of it ever being finished. So it feels like a kind of exam — finally seeing the interior in person and being glad its aesthetic has held up.
The client wanted a vibrant interior, lots of colour, and absolutely no beige minimalism. At first we tried to rein his wishes in a little. But at some point we realized we had to rein ourselves in as well, when we noticed that along with the bright terracotta wall we were also adding a colourful chandelier, furniture and accent decor.
On the one hand this made the work harder — the number of paint finishes and material selections grew several times over. By that measure it is one of the most challenging projects the studio has taken on in 15 years. On the other hand, that is exactly what made it more interesting. And many of those decisions we eventually arrived at ourselves.
The apartment was assembled from several separate units. The layout had to be changed during construction itself, and the entire project reworked from the ground up. While we were developing the first version, new sections went up around the building, and the view from the window became decisive. On the first day of construction we brought all the contractors together, drew up a schedule, and realized the project had to be designed again from scratch. We turned the layout around completely, moving almost every room so that the main ones would open onto the better view.
Wallpaper isn’t the most fashionable tool today, but nothing sets the mood or gives an interior character quite like a well-chosen print. In the home office, instead of a standard wardrobe, we turned its doors into a single canvas of wallpaper.
In the master bathroom we took a bigger risk. Marble on the vanity, patterned wallpaper, painted walls and a bathtub of greenish resin — materials that rarely sit together. It is bold, and that is exactly what makes it memorable. The walk-in closet next door was luckier than most: it has a window, so it lives on natural light all day, and natural light is what brings an interior to life more than anything else.
And in the children’s bathroom, shared by a boy and a girl, the usual answer is beige. We kept the beige background but built the whole look on bright tile — after that nothing else needed to be added.
