Steinach 10 Reframes Attic Living With Color-Rich Belle Époque Details
Steinach 10 crowns a 19th-century building in Merano, Italy, where NAEMAS Architekturkonzepte reworks two attic apartments into bright, ornamented homes. The project retains the Belle Époque character of the original façade while renewing interiors with fresh cabinetry, patterned friezes, and generous loggias. Residents gain new visual connections to the city’s rooftops and castle views, yet still move through rooms lined with restored tiled stoves and historic details.
Soft light filters through dormer windows and gable openings, catching on herringbone oak underfoot and a band of red ornament circling the white walls. Beyond the glass-framed loggias, castle-topped hills anchor the view over Merano’s historic roofs.
Steinach 10 occupies the renewed fourth floor of a Belle Époque building in Merano’s Steinach district, where NAEMAS Architekturkonzepte carefully reworks two attic apartments. The project treats the richly decorated 19th-century structure as a backdrop for a contemporary interior palette rooted in local craft, historical references, and gentle color. Every room holds the tension between preservation and renewal, expressed through flooring, cabinetry, textiles, and pattern.
The pair of apartments retains much of the existing attic layout, but strategic openings reshape how light and color move through daily life. New windows and enlarged gable openings connect living rooms to terraces, while south-facing loggias deepen the threshold between interior and city. Within this framework, a consistent material and color story ties together stoves, kitchens, bathrooms, and quiet seating corners.
Layering Historic Ornament
Wall treatments lean into the Belle Époque roots without turning nostalgic. A continuous frieze of red decorative motifs runs at eye level, tracing around sofas, doorways, and tucked-away reading chairs. This horizontal band grounds the pale walls and links rooms that vary in function, from dining corner to compact lounge. Restored tiled stoves, dense with relief and patina, anchor key points along this line and give the ornament a tangible, three-dimensional counterweight.
Furniture choices keep that historical richness legible. Simple upholstered sofas and armchairs in muted tones let the stoves and friezes lead, while cushions pick up the red accents in smaller doses. The result is calm but not neutral; color works as a thread rather than a headline, holding together old surfaces and new insertions.
Color-Dense Kitchen Core
In each apartment, the kitchen forms a vivid core. Tall cabinetry in blue-toned wood wraps around appliances and storage, its grain left visible so the color feels grounded rather than glossy. A central island extends this volume into the room, reading as both work surface and informal gathering point. Overhead, a skylight drops daylight directly onto the blue cabinetry, sharpening its contrast with the warm oak flooring that continues throughout.
Against this saturated envelope, small details bring warmth and rhythm. Pendant lights in matching blue shades hang above the island, echoing the cabinetry while adding a softer vertical note. On the perimeter, benches and dining chairs in textured upholstery introduce greens and soft reds, folding the kitchen into the larger palette of the apartment without losing its distinct hue.
Glass, Loggias, And Views
A glazed partition with slender red frames divides kitchen from sitting area, giving structure while keeping light continuous. The grid echoes the façade’s historical rhythm yet reads as clearly contemporary, a quiet diagram of panels, doors, and openings. Behind it, delicate curtains diffuse daylight and protect privacy, turning the adjacent lounge into a bright but gentle retreat. Chairs and a small table sit close to the glass, aligned with the window beyond toward the roofs and distant hillside.
South-facing loggias and a terrace extend this palette outward. Dark exterior cladding frames light timber decking, where coral-colored chairs and black furniture bring the interior color story into the open air. From here, residents look toward the castle and the patchwork of tiled roofs, enjoying a setting that feels continuous with the rooms behind the sliding doors.
Bathrooms With Floral Depth
Bathrooms push the palette into a more graphic direction. Walls carry large-scale floral patterns in cool blues and grays, a contemporary echo of historic decor and textile motifs. Below, blue cabinetry matches the kitchen tones, while a red basin sits on dark countertop as a clear focal point. Slim vertical lights flank the mirror, sharpening reflections and adding a precise, almost theatrical glow.
Even in these compact rooms, material decisions keep a dialogue with the rest of the apartments. Hardware and fixtures remain restrained, allowing color, pattern, and proportion to drive the experience. Residents move from oak-floored rooms past tiled stoves into these patterned enclosures without a jolt, only a gradual shift in intensity.
As the day turns, light washes across friezes, blue woodwork, and floral walls, changing how each element reads against the next. The historic shell stays present, but the interior composition feels fresh and deliberate. Steinach 10 quietly proves that a carefully tuned palette can connect past and present through everyday use.
Photography by Tobias Kaser
Visit NAEMAS Architekturkonzepte
