Moscow Apartment by Workshop Studio

Workshop Studio, Moscow Apartment, Interior Design, Photo Sergey Ananiev | Yellowtrace

Young architect and interior designer Alexandra Potapova – who founded Workshop Studio in 2014 – finds inspiration in the cities she visits, such as New York where she discovered the perfect lighting (by Apparatus Studio) and finishes for this project located in Moscow’s upscale Presnya neighbourhood.

“My key objective in this apartment was to create a timeless spirit, with modern and comfortable spaces that the clients (a couple with two children, one cat, and one dog) could adjust over the course of their lives,” Potapova says. “When I started to work on this project, it was a concrete space so I created all the layouts.”

Nestled in a new building and spread over 170 square meters, the apartment comprises an entrance hall, a guest bedroom with its bathroom, a living room with an open kitchen, a kid’s room with its bathroom, a laundry room and a master suite with two walk-in closets.

The owners asked Potapova to make sure their home would feel cozy, with natural colours and some wood elements throughout. Other than that, the interior designer had a lot of freedom to bring the different areas to life.

“In all the apartment, I used the same colour for the walls and the ceilings,” Potapova describes. “The doors are based on my sketches and complemented with handles by Piet Boon.” In the master bathroom, the fixtures are also by the Dutch designer. “I feel his aesthetics is close to my vision of the perfect home,” she confesses. “I like how he uses simple shapes with raw finishes. I love it when it’s not only about beauty but also about the story.”

The living room is the centre of the apartment, which is adorned with vintage pieces and artworks in every nook. The Little Petra lounge chair from &Tradition, the Apparatus Studio lighting fixture as well as the tiled stove and round coffee table – both designed by Potapova – give a feeling of warmth while the Rooms Studio chair and painting by M. Weiss Studio introduce black touches.

Potapova designed the shelves that run along one of the walls and then transform into a bureau. “The idea was to build a multifunctional item that could be used for different purposes,” she says. A comfortable sofa from Baxter sits next to a vintage bench from the Netherlands with the painting Plano Real 3 by Ding Musa (from Osnova Gallery) above it. On the other side of the room, the open, oak veneer-wrapped kitchen features Norr11 bar stools in leather, which combine with the concrete floor and the mossy green doors of the wood cabinet. The soft colour palette was also used in the master bedroom where grey prevails.

In this apartment designed to evolve with the family who lives in, Potapova used textures and curved shapes to create visual balance and harmony. “I thought about every square centimetre,” she says. Careful in everything she does, Potapova is already at the top of her game.