Leave it to an art director to understand the merits of visual impact. Looking to reimagine her apartment in Warsaw’s Praga Północ neighbourhood, a creative professional enlisted Katowice-based interior design studio Mistovia to devise a suitably adventurous abode for her and her dachshund. The end result is a playful celebration of colour, pattern and texture that still adheres to methodological rigour and discipline.
Part of the project’s underlying sense of order is a result of its building — a 1950s project designed by Jerzy Gieysztor and Jerzy Kumelowski during Poland’s socialist realism era. The unit Mistovia was tapped to reimagine is just 45 square metres, and yet when the firm arrived to tour it they found that its clever layout already divided the home into distinct, efficient zones.
As a result, Mistovia kept the existing floorpan largely intact. (One subtle adjustment: softening the boundaries between the kitchen and living area to create a more open-concept arrangement.) Instead, the studio’s main focus was on imbuing the apartment with fresh personality — without going so wild as to overwhelm the small space.
With that in mind, the home is now grounded by a mix of muted neutrals, with white and grey dominating the finishes. Floors feature poured micro-cement, while the bedroom doorway and kitchen (which extends out to give the adjacent dining nook a stronger sense of intimacy) are clad in crisp stainless steel.
When it comes to the walls, what they lack in colour they make up for in pattern. The rich American walnut burl veneer used on the kitchen cabinetry joins the psychedelic swirls of Alpi‘s Sottsass Grey veneer, installed on a feature wall that divides the dining area and bedroom. (A dining table and chairs by Bruno Rey add to the space’s design cred.)
The bedroom, for its part, is awash in dreamy purples. Mauve curtains line the back wall, while a violet wardrobe doubles as a room divider, carving out a dressing nook (which also grants access to the apartment’s utility closet) on the other side.
The final order of business was to reinvent the bathroom as a bright oasis. By cladding a portion of the room in glass brick, the designers soak the square pool tile-lined space in natural light — all the better to illuminate its custom vanity. Featuring drawers lined with the same wood veneer as the kitchen cabinets — not to mention a marble countertop that matches the Brazilian green stone used to border the apartment’s main doorway — the unit effectively summarizes the many rich textures added to the home around it. And up above, a pink light fixture by Polish brand Lexavala acts as the perfect finishing touch.
An eclectic palette of wood veneer, natural stone and stainless steel bring big style to a compact space.