Julie has been practicing architecture design since her graduation from the National Technical University of Athens in 1999. Through her roles in the Athens 2004 Organising Committee –between 1999 and 2004– she was involved with the specifications and the monitoring of the Olympic works: competition and non-competition venues, road projects and infrastructure.
As an individual practitioner, Julie focuses on residential projects; she has experience with a few leisure and retail spaces. Her approach to architecture design includes a deep study of the users’ needs and requirements, as well as questioning standard practices in order to let the clients’ functional and emotional delights shine.
The 27 sq.m. studio is on the sixth floor of a 1970’s building and it benefits from a 100 sq.m. terrace with uninterrupted views of Athens. The studio had not been renovated since construction.
BEFORE: The flat had three firmly separated rooms: kitchen, bathroom and living room. The latter also served as the bedroom; the closet of the studio was inside the living room. There were tiled floors in the kitchen and the bathroom, while the rest of the flat had white marble floor in the entrance & corridor and brown marble floor in the living room.
VISION: The owner of the studio wanted not only to refurbish the flat and replace old materials and finishes, like floor and wall tiles, but most importantly to create a new functional space. The main request was to create a somehow separate “bedroom area” within the studio.
AFTER: Julie’s vision of creating a sleeping corner/nook was highly appreciated, as it freed up space from the living room. All internal walls were demolished and a new bathroom area was constructed. An L-shaped custom-made cupboard accommodated the new closet and the kitchen appliances, stretching from the corridor into the living room.
The sleeping corner/nook is completed with the new closet, located in the studio’s corridor. Curtains or shades could be used to create isolation during sleep [see examples of how curtains become the new partitions in an apartment in Bilbao and another one in Kiev]. The owner is satisfied with the new sleeping corner/nook and the curtains have not been installed. The semi-double mattress is fitted in a custom-made wooden structure which features two deep drawers, opposite the light grey closet. The bed frame incorporates a 30cm extension, allowing the bed to become bigger. The bed frame is coated by the same smoked oak wood as the floor.
The studio takes its’ name from the tiles in the kitchen: Ascot Ceramiche released Keith Haring’s tiles in 2015, titled Game of Fifteen. The Keith Haring tiles are used in the space over the kitchen bench, along with plain white tiles, creating a playful ambience. A cardboard shelf with hidden spots on top of the bed is also decorated with the same tiles.
The new bathroom is partially located in the space of the old kitchen and it is the only closed space in the renovated studio, the only space with a door. Actually, the old door was upcycled and reused. Two shades of grey tiles are applied horizontally in the bathroom. A horizontal and a vertical mirror in the bathroom reflect the natural light and create optical illusions of a bigger space.
The flat is painted in a soft grey tone, contrasting with the white ceiling. One wall in the sleeping corner/nook and another one in the living room bear the mint colour. A new smoked oak wooden floor is installed in the studio. The teal blue sofa was the first item that was bought and placed in the studio right after the renovation.
From the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary:
Colour: the appearance that things have that results from the way in which they reflect light. Red, orange and green are colours.
“your true colours”: (often disapproving) your real
character, rather than the one that you usually allow other people to see
It was only after they got married that he showed himself in his true colours.
“with flying colours”: very well; with a very high mark
She passed the exam with flying colours.
From the Wikipedia:
Color (American English), or colour (Commonwealth English), is the characteristic of visual perception described through color categories, with names such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or purple. ... This reflection is governed by the object's physical properties such as light absorption, emission spectra, etc.
