Apartment.501 by AUK Design Studio

This 2300 Sq.Ft apartment looks over a west opening towards a lush green garden view. With abundant natural light pouring into the apartment, we approached the design concept with keeping in mind that the volume was to be the hero of the space. We simply opened the spaces to mingle with one another thereby achieving an open layout where every room has its own story, yet the flow is seamless from one room to the other.

The apartment being in one of Hiranandani’s most prestigious gated projects, the sheer volumes that we received were massive but had a tremendous scope to be altered in a much more optimal manner than what was given to us, we transformed the spaces completely by absorbing redundant areas into individual rooms thereby making the rooms larger and the passages smaller yet retaining its massive visual feel.

The family of four hired us for the second time over to do their new apartment, having worked with them for over ten years on various other small assignments we were aware of their lifestyle and how they have evolved over the last decade. Their desire was to have a space that was bright, minimal yet detailed enough to stand out without the extensive use of veneer or woody tones all around, they ware wanting to experiment with unconventional tones and textures and a material palate that set their apartments to look and feel a notch above the conventional high end super luxury been there seen before kind of look and feel. Being a small family in a large house with four bedrooms 5 bathrooms they were quite clear about how they wanted the house to function and intended to use every space for some form of daily function rather than leaving all bedrooms and bathrooms intact, we were called upon to optimize and design the said space exactly tailored to their every functional need.  

The thought process was to simplify the conventional given space and divide the volumes to just the right amount for the required activity or function of the space. We hence approached every room in the apartment with this simple rule to put the nature and active function of the space as a priority and then devised a plan to give the individual spaces their material identity. While some spaces were designed to be warmly lit and softly textured on the wall others were brightly lit with a hint of cool blues and tints and shades of magenta complemented with a hint of tactile black metal and brush brass hints and shades of greys and charcoal, everything but a conventional wood/veneered textured look and feel seen extensively these days in most apartment designs.   

The site was heavily modified and opened up to its maximum functional potential thereby making more space for individual rooms and in-place storage units, the conventional 4 bhk was converted into an intentional 3 bhk large with an option of making the 4th room into an adjoining lounge/study/entertainment room and lastly to be converted into a bedroom when required as per the need of the hour, thereby making one room function a multifaced one with several other functions at one go. The intent of reducing an unnecessary number of bathrooms and allowing those spaces to be absorbed into the respective areas made those spaces that much more luxurious specifically allowing the kitchen to increase its footprint by almost 35% thereby allowing us to have an island counter along with a fully functional kitchen making the experience a much open one, rest of the claimed spaces were absorbed into making a full wall closet in the entertainment / 4th convertible bedroom and gave us an opportunity to have an unconventionally large opening into the rooms instead of the usual openable shutters and completely negating age old door jamb detail.