De Leon & Architecture Workshop Primm accepted the challenge to the renovation of the interiors of a house in the 70 to 390 m2. The owners, a young couple interested in collecting contemporary art, asked the architects to transform the character of the existing interior, creating a balance between housing and gallery with warmth and neutrality.
Minor reconfiguration of walls and openings established a subtle realignment of interior spaces, featuring the same time, new axial relations between enclosures and exterior views. Spatially, the new visual continuity between the interior spaces increases the level of stray light that leaks from multiple directions, allowing for optimal viewing conditions for art with indirect natural light.
A white color palette, used to visually unify the interior spaces and minimize the distracting details of pre-existing, present a neutral backdrop to display works of art on a rotating basis. A large expansion of the area of the wall inside the living space serves as a canvas to project video. Both natural and artificial light are reflected and amplified in the wall surfaces.
Materially, the project uses a narrow focus through the rigor in the details and a deliberate expression of layers. Alluding to the idea of “luxury” as an aspect of the material qualities inherent in place beyond the cost of materials, the various elements of the project (both luxurious and humble) details looking to emphasize the characteristic surfaces such as texture, pattern, finish, and color.
