Apartment in Tel Aviv by Mickey Ben-Gan
Designed in 2017 by Mickey Ben-Gan with design graduates Ofira Alharal and Carmit Bronsky, participating in Studio 6b’s mentoring program, this contemporary 1,120 sq ft apartment is located in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Description
The Tenants: the couple in their 40, the husband is a construction contractor and a design enthusiast. His wife an independent corporate adviser who needs a working space at home. They have two children aged 5 and 8.
The Apartment: 104 square meter on the 2 nd floor in a three-story building in Tel-Aviv. The apartment was closed and divided into small spaces, and the beautiful shaded boulevard was almost unfelt. It consisted of two bedrooms, living room, study, kitchen, bathroom, and a balcony.
The Mission: to design a spacious, bright and harmonious apartment and to open it to the boulevard, as well as to add one more bedroom – three in total, and a working space with lots of storage.
Renovation duration: six months planning and two intensive month’s renovation.
Main space – kitchen, living room and a dining area:
Naturally we decided to place the public space facing the beautiful boulevard, opening an access to all the balcony using large windows and bringing the natural light and the trees inside the living room. In order to do this, we had to break all the interior walls of the apartment. We remained with only the foundation. Some concrete beams were exposed in the ceiling, and we decided to preserve the natural look. A concrete flooring was selected for the public space and a natural oak wood parquet in in bedrooms.
The TV hung on a pole between the kitchen and the living room, and can go both ways, the audio system and the converter are activated by only viewfinder so that the devices are hidden in the closet at the entrance hall. There was no need for a locker that may block and reduce the apace. The kitchen was moved to the main space. We created a large and airy kitchen with an island and a dining area that’s perfect for entertaining. The front kitchen cabinets have an oak wood look combined with wood painted white. Engraved concrete tiles on the wall behind the gas create a dark background. A dominant black light fixture hanging above the dining area along with the other lighting fixtures were selected to assimilate in the white ceiling and will not steal the show.
Work area: The clients’ need of a large open space on one hand and their need for a separate working area from the bedrooms on the other hand brought us to place a desktop space behind the sofa in the living room and to design a library in the back. A black iron library with wooden oak boxes, is wrapped around the horizontal window and the beam and creates open/ closed storage spaces. It stores paperwork, as well as displays ornaments and books. The thin lines of iron together with wood oak boxes create an interesting and harmonious composition without burdening the space. Here we also selected a lighting fixture hung on the wall that allows illumination lightning.
The cube:
In order to maximize natural ventilation to the bedrooms we needed (together with the owners) to overcome the common perception that wet spaces must have natural ventilation, and realize that the solutions that are offered today are no less effective. We placed the wet rooms in center of space and left the windows and natural ventilation to the bedroom area. The parent and children shower are back-to-back in the center of the space, which creates a “cube” built from large exposed blocks only in the public space.
Bathrooms:
The master bathroom – adorned concrete tiles were selected for the floor and white rectangular tiles for the walls. A white spacious closet was designed from floor-toceiling to allow large storage space, and hides the washer and the dryer. The bathroom cabinets were designed to combine with the white closet to include open and closed shelving. A frosted glass sliding door separates the bedroom from the bathroom.
Children’s bathroom: a mat of concrete tiles with delicate shades of green adds a little color to the white oak wood bathroom color.
Master bedroom: we exposed a concrete beam above the bed and combined the lighting with the wood and the concrete. In the near future it is planned to build a room to be used as a walk-in adjacent to the bedroom.
Children’s bedrooms: one room got a very large window that gets lots of light from outside, we decided to install blinds throughout the home, especially in this room. The thin black shutters allow privacy. In this room we designed white woodwork with a green hive. Additional storage in by the boy’s bed merges into the black window. We have added a wooden table and minimalist styling to warm the atmosphere up.
The second bedroom is the former family bathroom with a small window. a sliding window with a pocket was installed to Increase the light coming in from the outside. A big closet was designed with a hive for storage.
Carpentry:
A composed carpentry was planned to accommodate all those items we wanted to hide, like the washing machine. The most challenging of all was one of the children’s rooms cabinets that was designed to secretly hide the rag and mop. It’s located in the bedrooms hall and hides the cleaning accessories. At the hall entrance a white closet is located. The cabinet consists of many pieces, and carefully planned due to its complexity. The cabinet is being used to store both sides allowing a division between the entrance hall and the master bedroom without having to build a wall.
We had the pleasure of working with design loving clients, with good taste, who came to meetings with the professional staff ready, knowing what they wanted and led a professional and productive dialogue.
Photography by Gidon Levin
- by Matt Watts
