Francuska

Interior design 2024 | Refurbishment of an apartment in a 1930s tenement house on Francuska street in Warsaw | Team: Jan Strumiłło, Marta Szczepańska, Daria Kaczmarczyk | Glass mosaic designed and produced by Anna Libera | Photography by Jędrzej Sokołowski

It’s a pleasure to work in a building from the 1930s. We were tasked with a delicate intervention in a pre-war apartment located right in the heart of Saska Kępa, on the corner of Obrońców and Francuska streets. Initially, the scope included designing the kitchen and bathrooms, but gradually expanded to include a bedroom wardrobe and other minor details.
The kitchen, now open to the living room in the contemporary style, presented an interesting challenge of reconciling the charm of the past with the benefits of modern comfort. We proposed a continuous, cream-colored lacquered cabinet with striking, ergonomically shaped handles milled from oak wood and finished with rounded, arched ends. The articulated edges of the cabinets, protruding from the facade, add character to the furniture. This kitchen is not merely a showcase of beautiful objects – serious cooking happens here. Therefore, a significant challenge was to conceal the hood. We proposed a downdraft integrated into the induction hob, connected to a wall channel in the plinth area of the furniture. The cabinetry conceals other conveniences: a dishwasher, a built-in refrigerator, and an electric oven that doesn’t require bending down. The backsplash finished with a washable paint instead of tiles creates a more living room than kitchen feel. The room is dominated by a custom artwork: a mosaic by Ania Libera with an urban theme, made of coloured cast glass.
The transformation carried out on the bathrooms allowed us to update the functionality of the apartment by almost a hundred years since its construction. By taking a bit of space from the adjacent bedroom, we divided the single, narrow room into two: a smaller guest bathroom with a shower and a larger private one with a bathtub. The ceramic floor made of authentic corset tiles was obtained from demolition containers and meticulously cleaned by a contractor with the patience of a saint.
The wardrobe in the bedroom is located opposite the bed and its view greets the investors every morning, hence the license for special treatment. We indulged our passion for beautiful veneers and could not resist the temptation to design special handles cast from brass. Our intention was to make the inner field of light veneer appear to float intangibly against the background of panels finished with dark wood.