Dabbling with textures and proportions, the interior designer has rendered a spacious yet cosy ambience to this HDB flat
When interior design outfit Artistroom took on this project at Park Central in Ang Mo Kio, one of the first things the team noticed was the cumbersome layout of the 4-room HDB unit. In fact, the designers realised that the home looked much smaller than its 1,000-sq ft floor area.
This was mainly because of the awkward positioning of the main door; it opened into a short corridor before leading into the living area.
Change Agent
The kitchen sat on the other side of the wall along that corridor, so designer Katy Chong proposed to hack away the kitchen walls in an effort to encourage visual flow. She also moved the kitchen entrance to face the main entrance, cleverly allowing for space to accommodate a hidden shoe cabinet.
The apartment is home to a couple who needed only a single bedroom. Understanding the importance of space, Katy proposed to combine the two bedrooms into one. This allowed her to incorporate a large workstation in the bedroom.
Windows line the walls around this bedroom, enhancing a sense of space in the sleeping quarters.
Material World
Following the renovations, the kitchen sink and undercabinets sit at the former entrance of the kitchen. A low wall of hollow blocks – common construction material – and clear glass panel serve as a partial partition between the kitchen and the adjacent dining room.
Also, instead of smoothing over the rough textures of the hollow blocks, Katy painted them white so that the texture remains visible.
“Given the space constraint, we wanted to retain the texture. That way, the apartment doesn’t look like a box with four walls,” Katy explained. That is also the reason behind the use of stone veneers on the main wall in the living area.
Katy also highlighted the unique height of the dining table. “It’s a bar counter, and thus should be a little higher,” she pointed out. “We wanted to have clean profiles and elevated furniture so that the home would appear spacious.”
Neat and Practical
In the bedroom, Katy proposed a slightly uncommon way of placing the furniture; instead of pushing them up against the walls, she positioned them in the centre of the room.
Neatness is crucial in such a layout, so Katy had to ensure that the wires are kept from view. She also customised the bed and workstation to accommodate storage space.
The neat and orderly look continues into the bathroom, which Katy had also remodelled. Here, she overlaid the existing tiles with new light grey tiles, installed a new sink and built niches around the bathroom.
“Instead of wall-mounted glass or wire racks, having the niches in the walls makes it easier to keep the bathroom clean. There’s no need to worry about fixtures getting rusty or worn out,” she shared.
Katy’s clever choice of materials has given this apartment a new lease of life. And, together with the interplay of textures and proportions, it apparently looks bigger, brighter and bolder.
By Rossara Jamil
Photos: CI&A Photography
Article first published in
Lookbox Living #29, Nov/Dec 2013
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