Category: Colour

Renovation apartment from 1954 Bagarmossen, Stockholm

Private / Builder D13 Bygg

Plan Drawing

The apartment, in a 1954 building, was originally designed as an atelier flat. During the 1940s and 50s, modernist housing areas in Sweden often included atelier apartments for artists in each block. These were usually placed in the odd leftover geometries—spaces where a “normal” apartment wouldn’t fit. You can see that logic in this building, where large standard lamella blocks meet in a corner, and the need to connect to the open courtyard and adjust to variations in volume placement created this form.

The result was a small, three-level, one-bedroom apartment with a private stairwell reminiscent of the shared semiprivate ones found elsewhere in the complex. Originally built as a municipally owned rental building, the complex was later bought by residents in the 2010s. When this apartment was sold, only two people had lived in it since it was built. The idea was to preserve it as a work/live space rather than convert it into a typical nuclear-family layout.

From the first visit, the sense of space—formed by slabs coming together—became the main guiding principle for how to treat color and materials. Walls, floors, and ceilings each have their own distinct color, like separate planes or sheets of paper. Colors meet cleanly in the corners, emphasizing that feeling of slabs joined together. A palette of five colors was tested and used consistently throughout, avoiding situations where the same color meets itself in a corner. Built-in storage was treated with the same “slab” logic.

The kitchen has been opened toward the dining area; the building here forms a thin volume, and experiencing that slender space was essential to the apartment’s character. A door was moved from the former kitchen wall to one leading into the bedroom and walk-in closet. The original kitchen cupboards were kept, extended in height, and repainted. In the kitchen’s second corner—where the “machine park” sits (stove, fridge, etc.)—new appliances were installed, hidden behind their own green “slab.”

In the bedroom, a dividing wall built from Ikea Ivar units and knife-cut plywood separates the clothes from the bed. The clothes themselves serve as a soft screen toward the outside, providing privacy when changing. This room sits above the courtyard access, and because of its “floating” character, the floor can get rather cold, so it has been covered with a warm wall-to-wall carpet, adding a touch of modernist luxury. The final “slab” in the space is a circular curtain, enclosing the bed in a green, forest-like clearing.

Downstairs, a tiny guest room has replaced the former second hallway, while the large studio space remains open—its traces of color tests and paint experiments still visible. This space now doubles as a living room and work studio.

Outside the studio, two large trees press against the windows—one blooming pink in spring, echoing a tone from the apartment’s color palette. To create the feeling of being inside the trees rather than looking out at them through a white frame, the inner sides of the window frames were painted green.