Design project for residential common areas, 90 m²

The waiting area of the lobby is treated as a sitting room: soft orange sofas stand around a round timber table with a vase of dried flowers, and a large pendant light with a textured shade gives the warm accent light. Above the sofas is a line from Leo Tolstoy on the wall, ‘Happy is he who is happy in his own home’, and beside it a bioethanol fire turns a space people pass through into a place where residents meet.

The entrance was designed with tall glass doors and a battened ceiling that fill the lobby with daylight. Pale porcelain tile on the walls and floor contrasts with the black metal of the door openings, and further in, the orange of the waiting-area sofas returns, so that the lobby reads as one composition from the door to the seating.

The letterbox area is done in black metal: the residents’ boxes sit in a strict grid against pale porcelain tile. Above the row of boxes is a wall of living plants, and the battened ceiling carries on the material language of the common areas, setting the rhythm from the first few metres inside the block.

The ground-floor lift lobby is faced in large-format porcelain tile, with a dark stone texture on the wall by the lifts, and the floor and block indicators take the form of graphic metal plates. The battened ceiling and downlights carry on the theme of the entrance.

The niches by the lift lobby hold lit dried-flower arrangements and a graphic ‘sun’ mark, an accent in the wayfinding that reads on entering the block and returns in the hall by the letterboxes.

Further into the block, an open way leads to the concierge area, with a bench of timber battens against a warm terracotta wall; the sign ‘Entrance to the block’ with its stair pictogram marks the move from the hall into the residential part of the building.

The pram store is multipurpose storage by the entrance to the block: bicycles stand along the wall on individual racks, and the next row is given over to prams. A panoramic window the height of the wall fills the room with daylight and opens a view on to the courtyard.

The opposite wall of the pram store holds storage for sports and children’s equipment: wall mounts for scooters and a skateboard, a mesh container for balls, with pictograms to say what goes where.

The ground-floor washroom is finished in large-format grey porcelain tile with a stone texture, while the upper wall and the battened ceiling take the terracotta accent colour. The wall-hung WC and the open shower area with its tap set into the tile are made for the heavy use that common areas see.

The washing area has a wall-hung basin, a mirror the full width of the pier and a hand-sanitiser dispenser by the door; a timber cupboard with a recess for towels and a hairdryer carries on the warm materials of the complex.

The shared corridor is built on the contrast between pale porcelain tile on the floor and walls and a continuous black open-cell ceiling, which raises the apparent height of the passage. The numbered apartment doors are picked out by vertical orange strips around the frame, an accent that helps people find their way along a long corridor.

The corridor wall carries wayfinding for the ranges of apartment numbers and a decorative branch with the line ‘When you think about good things, they happen!’, a device that turns a utilitarian passage into part of the complex’s own story.

The underground car park is finished in the palette of the complex: warm terracotta walls by the entrances to the blocks contrast with the grey concrete of the parking area, and bright orange markings on the floor and on the columns direct movement and make things safer for residents.

By the lift lobby in the car park there is an indicator of floors and apartment ranges by block, and a niche with dried flowers and the graphic ‘sun’ mark repeats the decor of the halls above ground; one language of wayfinding and materials holds even in the technical parts of the complex.