Open Loft by gutgut // Bratislava, Slovakia.

This contemporary and multifunctional ‘space for art,’ situated in central Bratislava, has been reconfigured from a four-room apartment into an open loft by the architectural practice gutgut. Located in a building designed by Clement Silinger in 1928, the spaces are vast and clear, featuring minimalist furnishings contrasted with intriguing materials, textures and construction elements. The loft accommodates many functions including a living quarter, an art exhibiting space, a studio occupied by several craftsmen and artist – all of whom required different space arrangement and functions.

“We decided to work with the original plan of the apartment as one of the layers of our design. We kept timber doors and parts of floors from the original layout, combining them with a new simple arrangement that works according to the traditional split into day and night zones. The overlap of the two created a new rich loft-like interior plan”, explain the designers.

The only new dividing element of the apartment is a ‘functional’ wall working as a bathroom, store room, laundry and kitchen at the same time. The wall, built as a simple timber frame, stretches across the whole apartment, dividing it into day and night zones.

One of the stand outs in this interior is the flooring – one half of the apartment has the original oak parquet while the other half features red rubber flooring from the foyer to the kitchen, leading into the shower. The dining room’s sculptural table, created by Richard Senesi and Jakub Trajter, features a mahogany stump made of glued concentric veneer circles with a hole in the middle. Eastern Bloc represent!

[Images courtesy of gutgut. Photography © Peter Čintalan.]