House for a Graphic Designer | SET Architects

The 55 square meters’ apartment is located within the social housing complex, designed by Plinio Marconi in
1929 in the Testaccio district in Rome.
The requests of the client, a young Graphic Designer, were to conceive a flexible and reconfigurable space
starting from a limited budget. Despite the small size of the apartment, the client needed a home that could
allow the diversified use of the rooms according to the needs in constant transformation. The project idea
was to conceive the intervention around a central core, ensuring maximum freedom in configuring the
spaces around it. The central core was created by opening two full-height passages on the existing walls,
transforming the spatial conformation of the apartment with a simple intervention. The use of full-height
pivot doors made it possible to divide the space into separate rooms but at the same time, once opened, to
generate a fluid sequence of freely accessible and connected rooms. The central core contains on one side
the alcove that hosts the master bedroom with a window, while on the opposite blind side, there is a built-in
wardrobe. The color choices focused on the use of a few materials, highlighting their natural characteristics.
In particular, the “Graniglia” floor is the protagonist of the space: The grain and the amaranth red color were
created ad hoc by specialized craftsmen on the basis of specific design indications. The color of the floor was
chosen to combine a natural material such as wood, specifically the brushed ash, used for the pivot doors.
The kitchen has been custom made in stainless steel and is designed to be the protagonist of the living area.
It looks like a low monolithic block to be perceived as a pure and abstract volume.
Finally, for the bedroom it was decided to adopt an alcove solution, of intimate and contained dimensions, to
dedicate the maximum size to the rest of the rooms.
This project, despite small in size, is the result of careful work on minimum spaces and a virtuous process of
collaboration with the client, the general contractor and the specialised workers involved.