ST PETERSBURG | APARTMENT

An apartment of 54,17 m² in a pre-revolutionary Petersburg building, for a young couple with a taste for antiques and art. The building gave us high ceilings and mouldings, and we left them alone. The whole flat is held in one warm register, from rose to burnt copper, and there is nowhere to step out of it: the colour runs across the walls, climbs onto the ceilings and lets go in none of the rooms.

Against that field we put things with a character of their own. A wall of pink glass blocks divides the kitchen from the hall and lets light through in squares. The floor changes underfoot — black and white geometry in the cooking zone, herringbone parquet beyond it. In the corridor a red curtain replaces a door, the cabinetry turns the corner in a full radius, and tubular steel chairs from the last century sit at a modern table without asking permission.

In the bedroom the same colour goes deeper. Textured terracotta plaster covers the walls and the ceiling, the herringbone darkens underfoot, a green leather bed stands against the wall with one object above it. The light is low and warm, two pendants at pillow height instead of anything overhead.