Apartment in Tokyo
An Apartment Bursting With Fruit Flavor, Made With HI-MACS®-
Location Tokyo, Japan
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Design Adam Nathaniel Furman, UK
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Material HI-MACS® Sapphire and Ruby, from the Lucent collection
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Photo credit © Jan Vranovsky
If an apartment could be said to be bursting with fruit flavor it would be this one in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district, renovated by British architectural designer Adam Nathaniel Furman, using lucent HI-MACS® for the kitchen and bathroom areas, for a pair of adventurous clients.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom 160 square metres flat, located in the heart of Tokyo, is pure colour delight, a small but intensely crafted manifesto for an architecture that luxuriates in a celebration of the senses, and of every day domestic life. A palette of pastel colours, with a mix of natural and hi-tech materials like spruce and HI-MACS®, and an open and interconnected layout combine to create a voluptuous interior world.
The apartment´s owners, a mixed Japanese-expat retired couple, who regularly host guests from abroad, have owned the apartment since the 1980s, just after the building was completed. The couple recently commissioned designer Adam Nathaniel Furman for the renovation project.
The flat´s existing layout was dark and self-contained, with small rooms off a long corridor and low ceiling heights. Furman rearranged the area to create an entrance vestibule and short hallway leading past twinned single bedrooms, after which the apartment opens up into a large open-plan living kitchen area with a big island/breakfast bar. The master bedroom and en suite bathroom are off the dining area, creating flexibility should the owners want to rent out part of the apartment. The use of colour to define spaces is omnipresent and the mix of materials creates a joyful but functional living space.
The ceilings were raised, which increased the height significantly in most places, and also created a complex roofscape, above which all the various beams are covered in off-white textured wallpaper. With the eye concentrating on the colours below, the level changes in the ceiling do not jar.
The palette of cosy, but light and joyous colours used throughout the whole area, in combination with the larger open spaces and sheer blinds, makes for a light-filled interior.
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