RYB Apartment, Kyiv

The apartments are located in the Rybalsky residential complex in the Podol district of Kyiv. Since the apartment is located above the commercial area, they had the opportunity to use the space more variably. They divided the entire space into two blocks – a private part (which includes a children’s room and a master-bedroom with a bathroom) and a public (which includes a spacious kitchen-living room, a bathroom and a workplace).

This place designed by Men Bureau to accommodate the needs and emotions of the user, becoming the environment for various scenarios of everyday life. All the main rooms are compositionally connected with each other due to materials and textures. Their team was commissioned to design a place that could offer a peaceful haven for the owner and his family to retreat in from their cosmopolitan lifestyle. The main goal was to create a clean, minimal but informal atmosphere, based around natural materials.

To achieve flexibility and avoid unnecessary division of this already compact apartment, the partitions have been almost completely removed, creating an open plan layout with one central module defining the main living space. This module consists of a functional kitchen set, a dining area, a compact workplace and a spacious living room; a feature that allows for the space to have several functions without any unnecessary clutter.

All rooms except the children’s room are directed to courtyards with an abundance of greenery. A picturesque view of the Dnieper opens from the children’s room. Soon after entering the university, this room will be designated as a meditation place for parents. In this room, they positioned the workplace in such a way that natural light contributes to comfortable work.

To visually connect the premises into one whole, they used a single palette of materials – birch plywood, microcement, Japanese KitKat tiles and Caribbean Calcite marble. A laconic background for furniture and light elements is created with their help. They balanced the cool tones of micro-cement in all rooms with the warm textures of plaster and wood.