São Tomé stone flooring guides the decor of this 100 m² Rio apartment

When the young lawyer and professor decided to move into this 100 m² apartment in Flamengo (RJ), he asked architect Isabella Lucena – from CASACOR Rio – to renovate all the rooms, indicating that his budget was tighter because it was a rented property. “Among the requests was the creation of an office and a possible integration between the kitchen and the living room ”, says the professional. The renovation brought about many changes to the original layout, especially in the wet areas. The toilet that was on the left side of the social entrance and the service room next to it, for example, gave way to the new kitchen, integrated into the living room, as requested by the client. The old service bathroom was opened up to the hallway and transformed into a new guest bathroom, with a sliding door. Facing the same hallway, the old kitchen became the new guest bathroom, while the only bathroom in the hallway was opened up to the back bedroom, which became the resident's suite. According to the architect, the São Tomé stone floor found in the apartment set the tone for the project, which was based on a style full of natural materials, a color palette in light tones of raw, sand and off-white , organic shapes with cozy textures and natural woods to contrast with the coldness of the flooring material. “We had to restore the stone because it was very dirty. We also completed the flooring of the current kitchen with new stones, where there was originally a toilet and a service room,” he says. The decor is practically all new and follows a style that values simplicity, natural materials, light tones, natural light and national design . As the idea was to create a more fluid social area, the architect opted for a circular layout with organically shaped furniture, such as the Peeble sofa, designed by Daniel Coutinho , and the Concrete coffee tables and Serena swivel armchairs – creations by Estudiobola .

To create a reading space in the TV room that didn’t feel cramped into a corner, the architect raised the floor with masonry between the sofa and the window, added a step to access it and painted this “volume” with white epoxy paint. “In addition to dividing the reading corner into sections, this feature also created more places to watch TV on days when the house is full,” she says. In the suite, the old wardrobe was kept, restored and painted green, and received black handles, the same color as the iron frame of the mirror resting on the floor. Designed by the architect, the headboard of the bed was made in carpentry with a natural freijó finish. The other room was transformed into an office, and could also be used as a guest room: as the architect needed a visually interesting background for the client's occasional live broadcasts and interviews, the workbench was positioned on the balcony, facing the window, and a bookshelf was designed in the background, in front of the old closet, thus creating a walk-in closet. “ We made a curved portal on the balcony to delimit the counter area and maintain the style of the decoration of the rest of the apartment and closed the back of the bookcase with transparent acetate to allow natural light to enter the closet corridor, thus avoiding the feeling of claustrophobia”, explains the architect. In the kitchen integrated into the living room, it is worth highlighting the curved plaster ceiling (made with molded panels to disguise the difference between the ceiling and the height of the very low beam that divides the kitchen from the living room), the custom-made mirror with a metalwork frame (created to enlarge the kitchen, give it depth and highlight the curve in the ceiling) and the white quartz countertop with a curved design at the end and rounded finish at the edges.