A tour of a 180 m² apartment in a boutique residential building

An apartment of 180 square metres in a boutique residential building: an interior that ARTEVRIKA spent two years creating as a work of art. For the Sila Doma channel, host Darina walked through every space in the apartment with the studio's designers Nadezhda and Aleksei, from the living room with its panoramic views to the utility room, and unpacked what goes into a result at this level.

The studio's signature principle is at work here: a union of masculine and feminine, and with it a union of aesthetics and absolute comfort. A Royal Green quartzite panel and floating stone consoles in the living room, up to seven lighting scenes for each space, custom furniture built to the studio's own sketches, veneered panels with individual tinting, white onyx and natural stone mosaic in the bathrooms: the level of finish here shows in every detail, not just in the overall impression.

Below is the full transcript of the conversation with the studio: go back to any part of the video to look at a detail again.

About the studio and the project

Darina. Hello everyone, welcome to the Sila Doma channel. Today we have a tour of a stunning interior designed by the ARTEVRIKA studio. And as always, we'll share all the useful contacts in the description of this video. Nadezhda, Aleksei, hi!

Aleksei. Our studio has been around for 19 years now, and we create high-end interiors. Lately we've been focusing more on private interiors — apartments and country houses.

Darina. Nadezhda, tell us about what makes your studio distinctive.

Nadezhda. The main thing that sets us apart is the union of masculine and feminine, and everything that flows from that balance. Just like in this interior we're showing you today — a union of maximum aesthetics with maximum comfort.

Darina. Tell us where we are.

Nadezhda. We're in a boutique residential building. The location is wonderful — right in the city centre, with magnificent views. From the living room there's a view of an arena, which is beautiful in the evening. From the other side of the apartment you can see a building by Norman Foster, and a river runs past on the right. This apartment is 180 square metres.

Darina. Nadezhda, what's the ceiling height?

Nadezhda. The shell height here is 3400 mm, and after finishing it's 3200–3300 mm, depending on the room. Darina, let me show you around this beautiful interior.

Darina. Let's go. Nadezhda, tell us more about the clients.

Nadezhda. Our clients are a couple whose children have grown up and who now have grandchildren — that wonderful stage of life when you can finally afford to bring your dreams to life. Their request was to create a unique, custom space with maximum aesthetics, at a new level.

Darina. And what does “a new level” mean?

Nadezhda. In terms of materials, it's basically the quintessence of the best materials brought together in one space.

The living room

Darina. Nadezhda, there was originally a free layout. Why did you decide to make such a large living room?

Nadezhda. Because it's a family. There are children, there are grandchildren, there's the older generation — grandmother. When we dropped by to wish the clients a happy New Year, they were already living here, and the whole family was gathered on this beautiful sofa, with the table set for the New Year. It was wonderful to see the space come alive and fill up. It's a proper, beautiful, aesthetic zone for the whole family. Another very important part of this living room is the steam fireplace. Even though humidification is already built in here, the sight of the flame adds extra magic.

Darina. So it's not a bio-fireplace that burns a real flame?

Nadezhda. No, it's not a bio-fireplace, it's a steam fireplace. We'll show it in action. In the evening it's genuinely spectacular — with the lighting, orange reflections play across the ceiling.

Darina. There are so many lighting scenarios.

Nadezhda. Yes, lighting design is the most important element of our design work. Here, each space probably has five to seven scenarios, which let you reveal the space in different ways and even manage your own mood.

Darina. Nadezhda, this is a large, stunning living room, and spaces like this often use art — paintings, for example — but here there aren't any. What's the reason for that?

Nadezhda. Great question, Darina. There is a picture here, one that nature has been putting together for millions of years, and it's the king of this living room, the main character here. It's a panel of natural stone — Royal Green quartzite. And in the bay window area we also have beautiful natural stone consoles. Let's go take a look at them.

Darina. Let's go.

Nadezhda. When you work with stone, Darina, you usually need to understand that there can only be one lead player. It's hard, in a single space, to reconcile the texture of a lead stone like this quartzite with two decorative console bases that appear in the bay window. Compositionally there were rectangular piers there, but we came up with the idea of rounding them off — to echo the shape of the dining table, because square “ears” wouldn't have looked very good. With these two pieces, everything seems to look effortless — the slab appears to stand lightly, the consoles seem to float — but it's not that simple at all, it takes very detailed work. After the designer's work, once the client falls in love with a particular stone, a large body of engineering work begins — to make it sit perfectly against the floor and the ceiling, as it does here. There's also a special feature in this quartzite — as I said, there's a vein, and it doesn't just glow on its own: there's a light panel behind it that needs to be serviceable. Here the detail is tied to a side panel — the cover comes off, the panel is taken out and serviced. It's exactly the same with these consoles. The weight is considerable, so a metal frame was engineered and integrated into the wall at the construction stage. Then this half-radius had to take the metal-effect plaster cleanly, and only after that the console itself, and that is done only with a template. There are many companies that sell stone, but few can handle solutions in natural stone at this design level. Here we work with leaders in the field, such as the company Krasota.

Darina. Nadezhda, that's a really interesting detail. How did you achieve this metallic finish? What's this texture?

Nadezhda. It's decorative plaster, a liquid-metal finish. As with every custom solution, even one approved on small samples, experience tells you it never comes together that easily. Getting this effect right in two symmetrical niches wasn't simple either, and a company with years of experience, Derufa, handled a task at this level. Here we have a combination of materials: metal-effect decorative plaster, and natural stone that echoes the lead material; after the green, it sits quietly, modestly. We also put in some great obelisks here that take care of the energy of the home: they gather energy, the way any pyramid or triangle does. And again on the material: they're made in aged mirror and sit in dialogue with this panel.

Darina. Nadezhda, that's a real statement light fitting, tell us about it.

Nadezhda. That's a chandelier by the Italian brand Terzani, a genuine art object in this living room. On the subject of paintings — yes, there's already so much going on here that anything more would probably be too much. It's thousands of chains assembled by hand by craftsmen. Of course, when we visit trade shows in Milan, the Terzani stand is one of our favourites — we always go there and come away inspired.

Darina. Aleksei, tell us about interesting solutions in the living room.

Aleksei. One solution here is the veneered wall, running fully from floor to ceiling, and it's not just a flat wall but wraps around a corner, with a mirror insert. So the wall wouldn't read as one big fence, a solid wooden panel, we broke it up into segments and added a metal insert — polished stainless steel with a mirror effect. We turned the corner of the mirror towards the window, so reflected light would play across it and natural light would set a rhythm across the structure, creating a rhythm of light. And the mirror that craftsmen made for us uses a technique of refined antiquing, an amalgam, which gives it depth and a refined tone. At the same time it doesn't feel like a mirror someone's reflected in, but the space expands and an elegant, refined style is created.

Darina. These are all custom solutions, right?

Aleksei. Absolutely.

The kitchen

Darina. Nadezhda, tell us about the kitchen — what did the clients ask for, do they cook a lot?

Nadezhda. This apartment is a city-living format — the clients also have a country house. Where there's a house, there's landscaping, a gazebo with a full kitchen, cooking fish, meat, everything else. And the city-living format calls for a fully functional kitchen for a dynamic couple who work a lot and travel — but they don't cook much here.

Darina. Tell us about the functionality of this kitchen.

Nadezhda. Everything you need is here: a fridge, a freezer, a dishwasher, storage cabinets. For us the main task here was aesthetics, because there's no other kitchen quite like it. It might look like veneer and enamel, but the interesting part is that it's all framed, as if in a picture frame, in a metallic finish — that's the handles. Again, it's that beautiful made-to-measure dress, cut to our own sketches. We create things this remarkable together with the engineers and designers at Deribas. In terms of materials, it's quartz composite — a very large worktop. In terms of technology, there's a hob with an extractor, and sockets that retract. A really interesting, far from ordinary solution is the splashback in Lacobel. We needed it here because we needed a specific colour that would echo the wall in the hall — the same kind of monumental flat surfaces are there. And we hit exactly the colour of the decorative finish in the hall, and only Lacobel made that possible.

Darina. So how many layout options did you offer the clients in total?

Nadezhda. Most often, the big decisions about the rooms come together quickly, but then, once the company handling air and climate control is brought into the project, things start shifting. And overall, in our experience, where we need to line everything up on axes, this project, fortunately, let us line up a great many of them. On one axis there's the window, three beautiful light fixtures over the island, two mirrored dividers on either side. And crowning it all is a beautiful dish — a genuine art object from the brand Decora Glass. I've been in love with them, Darina, for years now.

Darina. So it's a local manufacturer?

Nadezhda. It's a local manufacturer, and the range there is simply wonderful. This dish was on my professional wish list back when only one Frenchman was making it — the same goes for the floor in this hall. They lived in my professional dreams for about seven years, and now I've managed to bring them to life, I'm very pleased. An important feature of this kitchen is that it's only part of a larger, unified furniture composition: there was a duct column left by the developer here, and it sits inside this composition, with the furniture wrapping around it. On the left are cabinets that look like plain veneered panels. Then comes the kitchen. On the right is an open display section for decor. And on the living-room side, there's that beautiful composition framed in a U-shape. It's all one continuous furniture composition: getting it to agree in geometry, in materials, lining it up vertically and meeting the plaster ceiling element — that takes real work.

Darina. But that's the company's craftsmanship, isn't it?

Nadezhda. That's the craftsmanship of a company with a lot of experience — that's one thing. And two, a company that's also willing to take on risk. We know there are plenty of furniture companies around; the ones working in the high-end segment are rather fewer. And you still need someone to absorb the risk when something doesn't line up, doesn't work out, or needs retinting. There's a lot of variation in daylight: less of it reaches this pier from the bay window, more reaches here. To make all of it work in both artificial and daylight, and stay consistent in colour, we had moments like that, and Deribas handles it — they simply redo it until they reach a result the clients are happy with.

The hallway

Darina. Nadezhda, as the old theatre saying goes, it all begins at the cloakroom, and this apartment has a stunning hallway. Tell us about the materials.

Nadezhda. I'd start with the composition: every proper, beautiful home has a large hall. Here we made it at least a small one, but still a hall — with a perfectly rectangular perimeter in its composition. The design challenge was that there are four doors here, and we needed to make sure they stopped reading as doors. We made the doors floor-to-ceiling, in one material, and used veneered vertical framing from the same collection. That way the doors aren't visible — instead you read parts of a composition that set a rhythm and frame this accent zone. In terms of materials, there's decorative plaster here, and an artistic panel of natural stone made from four types of marble. And important elements of the composition are these dividers: graphite mirror on one side, veneer on the other. It's a completely playful piece: you can use them as a dressing mirror, see yourself from every angle, you can multiply this grand hall, especially in the evening when all the lights are on, or multiply the kitchen, or set them horizontally — then they won't multiply either of these spaces at all.

Details and composition

Darina. Design is usually all in the details, and here there's a colossal number of them. Tell us more about them.

Nadezhda. It's as if everything has to be in dialogue, just like in life — people need to communicate with each other too.

Darina. Ideally, yes.

Nadezhda. Yes, and sometimes even gossip. I always tell my students that materials should gossip with each other. If we've got brass on these beautiful French light fixtures, it absolutely has to echo something else. Take these lovely little pencil details on the Italian consoles: first you see two clean, slender-legged forms, decoration on them, and then, as your eye moves down, there are these pleasant little accents. That's basically how it all falls into place. I suppose composition is pauses, accents, then dialogues. Composition, for me, is the single most important category I study. It's in music, in cooking, in the outfit — yours and mine — that we're wearing right now, in design, in dance — in every art form. In design, composition works like this: after a long pause, like along that wall where everyone loses even the door to the study, doesn't see it at all, there has to be an accent zone. After major accents, like this Decora Glass dish, there's a dialogue between the dish's form and these wall lights, and the wall lights, in turn, have a material dialogue with the pencil details, the brass. Since we've touched on the dialogue of forms, I'd like to talk about the shaping in the bedroom. Let's go there.

Darina. Let's go.

The bedroom

Darina. I think the bedroom is always the most beautiful space. Tell us about it.

Nadezhda. With the bedroom, I'd start a little further back — it's first and foremost about light, about circadian rhythms. The lighting design here is really beautifully worked out, and we'll show it. And the shaping is an embracing form. It's a really lovely collection of Italian furniture: if you look closely, even the bench is embraced by wooden elements, the bed itself is embraced by wooden elements, and the two dark floating shelves are embraced by the fabric part of the bedside table. I won't even get into the headboard. Usually — and we do this often — we create an accent wall directly in colour, or play with contrast against the headboard. Not here: we took a different path and decided to create this completely enveloping, embracing atmosphere. It starts with a plaster cornice, then everything flows across a plaster panel, and there's no contrast with the headboard. But in the evening, when the stars come out and the lights come on, that's when the full beauty of this composition unfolds.

Darina. Nadezhda, there are a lot of lighting scenarios in the bedroom, tell us about them.

Nadezhda. There's an evening lighting scene that uses only reflected light. That's the most flattering light for a person, for the eye — and the eye is part of the brain, brought out to the surface. So in the evening our gaze never catches a light source directly. Controlling daylight comes first. We just tell the voice assistant: “Close the curtains.” “Turn on the light in the bedroom.” Right now the whole composition, Darina, is opening up. This is a very soft, calming light from a rotating-form chandelier. This is reflected light, flowing across the plaster panel — not directional, specifically reflected light from these wall lights. And right now the “shoulders” of the headboard are lit up, but it isn't an accent by colour.

Darina. Nadezhda, there are a lot of veneered panels.

Nadezhda. Yes, first of all, it's one of the project's materials overall. There's a concept of a “project palette”, where we pick a material and distribute it across the space in varying amounts, rather than introducing a new one for every room. There's also a very complex tint on these panels, if you look closely: it varies in tone — darker, lighter — and in hue — a touch more pink, a touch more green. That's also an exceptional custom tint. The beautiful flooring is Sampo Wood, a custom tint.

Darina. What is a custom tint?

Nadezhda. If you go to a showroom, you won't find it in the standard range — it was made specially. It's worth noting it wasn't made for our project, but for another of this manufacturer's projects; we chose it anyway, and this exact tint appears in literally five projects. And this wall continues on: behind it is a hidden door to the master bathroom, and that's where the reading nook is.

The reading nook

Darina. Nadezhda, what's this room used for?

Nadezhda. It's a beautiful, gentle, feminine zone — the reading nook. Our clients are readers, and we understand perfectly well: when you get into bed, more often than not you just look at a screen and fall asleep. Reading needs its own separate ritual. Once you settle onto this sofa with a book, you already know for certain you're going to read.

Textiles

Darina. How was the textile chosen for such a sumptuous interior? You already said materials are very important — I imagine fabrics are an important story too.

Nadezhda. Yes, fabrics are a hugely important story, because when we work with fabrics, we're first and foremost working with light. Here we use a lot of different sheers, different collections, and sometimes combine them. Like in this area, where we look out onto a building by Norman Foster — you don't want to shut that off with heavy fabric. Here we have two kinds of sheer: one is coarser, and it almost stands in for the main drapery, while the other replaces net curtains. That gives a beautiful richness to the materials, and the light passes through very beautifully — we don't mute these two areas, which could easily be muted by heavy fabric. Practically all the textiles on this project — and I've already said that, like stone, textiles are a project within a project — we choose and re-choose for a good three months. With the designers at VIONA and their production team, we're always refining everything, they listen to us, we look at different options. Practically all the textiles here were made together with them.

The master bathroom

Darina. An incredible space, this master bathroom. I imagine natural stone is what makes it too.

Nadezhda. Absolutely, the same principle applies here — one thing, but beautiful: we go straight for the most beautiful option. It's white aristocratic onyx with dimmable lighting — it can be brighter, it can be dimmer. There are several lighting scenes here too, and right above the bath there's a speaker — a kind of mini-spa mode. You can turn off all the lights, turn the onyx up to full, switch on ocean sounds, and enjoy the treatments. There's a really interesting mix here, Darina: alongside some very well-known Italian brands, there are local ones too. Local manufacturers have come a long way in recent years, and here both the bath and the basin are from a local brand. And there's no dissonance at all — it's as if the manufacturers meet each other as equals.

Darina. Two statement chandeliers in one bathroom — how did you decide on that?

Nadezhda. Yes, that's an interesting point too. These “soap bubbles” are almost there — and almost not. We only really see the play of light on the shade and its reflection on the walls; the volume of the large shades themselves barely registers — that's the game we played with it. The “jellyfish” chandelier in the centre, though, already has its own visual weight. There's a concept of visual weight, and it's balanced here: in volume this cluster and the chandelier are roughly equal, but in the glow itself, because it's glass, they're different.

The bedroom's walk-in wardrobe

Nadezhda. This is the walk-in wardrobe off the bedroom. It's all done in veneer, with the storage capacity you need, and a large full-length mirror. And here there's a change in flooring — you see — to carpet, which adds a touch of chic, a certain softness. And the beautiful organisers finished in Alcantara for accessories — that's all done by Deribas too.

The study

Darina. Aleksei, tell us more about the study.

Aleksei. Our study is a kind of multifunctional space: it's both a study and a guest room, where guests or the owners' visiting children can stay. So this block also has a bathroom and a wardrobe. In style it's more solid, more masculine — after all, the study's owner is a man, as is the case throughout the apartment — and the design here is stricter, more minimalist, a little different from the rest of the apartment. The decorative finish here is a neutral background, against which the furniture from the same company that made all the furniture in this apartment looks great. And when it comes to the decorative finish — we've been working with Derufa for a very long time now. We love them overall, we use them on practically every project, because they have a high level of service and a lot of different materials. What I like is that when we're choosing a material, they make an incredible number of test samples that can be applied on site, shown, adjusted in tone. We literally control every millimetre on the colour chart, and can shift it in any direction. That matters, because all our projects are individual, and we match the shades to the textiles, the rug, the furniture, the clients' eye colour, and so on. So Derufa's approach suited us completely here, and we chose them specifically.

Darina. Aleksei, we've been saying this interior is very beautiful and sumptuous, but it's also functional. What does the functionality consist of?

Aleksei. The functionality comes from the fact that we live in the modern world, and we apply the technologies we have to the interior too. Everyone has a phone, and pretty much all of life — for an entrepreneur, for anyone — is in the phone. Managing the apartment is in the phone too. An apartment isn't just a home anymore, it's a smart interior. Of course, there's smart-home automation here: ventilation, humidification, control of climate, heating, curtains, lighting — it's all tied into a single system. That adds a high level of comfort, since the clients live outside the city and this apartment is for weekends. At any moment they can see what's happening with the apartment: whether the lights are on, what the temperature is, whether the blinds are open or the curtains are closed. Nobody even mentions that anymore when you leave the house — that's just the baseline, in my view.

Aleksei. Since the study has a second purpose as a guest bedroom, it also has its own bathroom and wardrobe. Right now we're in the bathroom, which is also done in minimalist design: neutral walls entirely in extra-large-format porcelain tiles, a light beige tone. The second composition, behind the sanitaryware, is dark, with gold veining. For us, bathrooms are always the zone where we place the technical elements of an apartment: there are access panels where fan coil units hide, or cabinets where the heating manifold and water filter sit tidily out of sight. So for an architect, for a designer, a bathroom is a particular zone where you can play a little with the technical elements that absolutely have to go somewhere in the apartment.

The guest bathroom

Darina. Nadezhda, such a small space and so many beautiful details — how is that possible?

Nadezhda. It's again about balance, about directing attention. We're in a small space, the guest bathroom, but we direct attention like this: we set up a central element — the chandelier. Then, at face and hand height, we draw attention with a mosaic splashback — this mosaic uses three types of natural stone and even copper mirrors. And a really beautiful, already iconic Italian screen. This is my favourite move in interiors: when we don't take the porcelain stoneware all the way to the ceiling, but stop, add a frieze and a coloured ceiling — again with reflected light — and it creates the feeling of a jewellery box. As if you'd walked into the master bathroom rather than the guest one — except no one's going to take you on a tour of that one. And yet someone thought about you, took care of you, and made it beautiful.

The walk-in wardrobe and the utility room

Darina. Nadezhda, what would we do without a walk-in wardrobe?

Nadezhda. Yes, we have several, and this walk-in wardrobe comes right after the grand hall. It's for outerwear, shoes, bags. There's a spot for a robot vacuum here, and behind part of this mirror are the electrical control panels.

Darina. So the point of this space is to keep the entrance area clean and beautiful?

Nadezhda. Yes.

Darina. Nadezhda, where does this door lead?

Nadezhda. This door leads into the utility room. It's a pocket door — very handy when there isn't room for a hinged door into a particular space, it saves room.

Darina. Am I right that this is exactly the space where the servicing zone for our natural stone is?

Nadezhda. Yes, there's a concealed door here, it opens, and the entire lighting subsystem for the stone — or any other, for the plumbing — can be serviced right from this room.

The power of a home

Darina. Nadezhda, Aleksei, thank you so much for sharing such a sumptuous interior with us today. Just being here for a single day is a pleasure.

Nadezhda. We were just as happy to show you every detail of this project, because it was created as a work of art over two years.

Darina. And now our traditional question — what is the power of a home, for you?

Aleksei. For me, the power of a home is in the family, in family values. The stronger the family, the stronger the home is, in the broad sense.

Nadezhda. I'll support that answer from my husband, of course, on one hand. On the other hand, I'll probably answer as a professional: when clients trust us with their spaces, their budgets, for me, as a professional, the power of a home is in the composition — that is, in the harmonious combination of every part.

Darina. Thank you for being with us, for watching to the end. All the useful contacts are in the description of this video. Bye for now.

Aleksei. Bye.