Designing inside historic buildings
Four-metre ceilings, plaster mouldings and old parquet: what to keep, what to rethink and where contemporary furniture fits in.
Historic apartments come with a scale most new buildings never offer. In Gates, four-metre ceilings set the tone for everything that followed.
We treat the original architecture as the background: mouldings are restored, parquet is laid in a pattern that respects the house, and new elements are kept clearly contemporary so the two layers read separately.
The hardest part is usually services — ventilation, lighting and storage have to disappear into an envelope that was never designed for them.
