Description

Dear Client,

Thank you for the opportunity to work on your project, it was a pleasure.

I'm going to briefly go through the proposal and explain some design decisions.

As your idea was to add a mezzanine floor to better use the full height of the apartment the main point was to maximize the height usage. As you mentioned the bathroom had a fixed minimal height of 240 cm, which served as a guideline to what was possible in other areas of the space.
The large opening on the facade is predominantly closed regarding natural light but needed to be kept to maintain the integrity of the original facade. This is why the door is kept as a shutter that can be open either manually or you could automate this system if preferred. This way you could add more natural light into the space, not only the lounge area that is situated by the door but the whole apartment. The door is placed on the outside, so the inside still has a window that is full height. The upper part of the window is always open and not covered by the door/shutter.

As the installations are towards the inside of the apartment close to the entrance area, this is where the bathroom is placed. This is a practical reason for this floor plan arrangement, but not the main one. To give the lounge area the full height, the kitchen and bathroom areas would get the lower ceiling by placing the bedroom mezzanine on top of those two areas.

The entrance to the apartment is kept as was. from the entrance hall, the bathroom is directly accessible, and through a small corridor, you access the large open space area with kitchen, dining, and lounge area.

The bathroom is equipped with a double sink, toilet, bidet, and large walk-in shower. It has natural ventilation, and a shutter is added from the inside above the sink serving both as a mirror and blinds for the window for privacy.
The bathroom area has a separate laundry/storage area. As you said, this apartment would be rented as an Airbnb for short rentals, this laundry/storage would probably not be used by guests, more for maintenance. Having a washer and dryer with storage above, fresh bed linen, towels, toiletries, and cleaning supplies could be kept in this space.

The kitchen is small but fully equipped with a fridge/freezer, built-in oven and microwave, sink, dishwasher, and cooking hob with hood above.
The installations for the sink and dishwasher can easily be brought from the bathroom next to it.
The kitchen has a peninsula with a breakfast nook.
The dining area is placed between the kitchen and the lounge and can be moved either into the kitchen area to host a larger number of people or into the lounge space.
The lounge is furnished with a sofa (can be a sofa bed if preferred) and a lounge chair with a console low cabinet with tv and bookshelves above.

The mezzanine is accessed from the lounge by a staircase combining metal structure and wooden steps. The staircase is designed in the way visible in the renderings and plan drawings to keep as much as possible from the floor plan open.

The bedroom area is divided into two areas.
Since the bathroom height was 240cm, the aim was to get as much height on the mezzanine floor as possible while balancing it with the height of the kitchen area below.
At first, I thought a walk-in wardrobe and storage would be most appropriate in the lowest part of the apartment above the bathroom. But, this space would be very uncomfortable to use while not standing up straight. This is why I decided to make the bedroom on two levels. The sleeping area is a step higher up than the other part of the mezzanine floor. While being the lowest part it is still very comfortable for the sleeping area and sitting on the bed is possible with plenty of extra space above the head.
The rest of the mezzanine floor has a height of 200cm and the wardrobes and a small study area are placed in this area overlooking the lounge from above.
The sleeping area can be closed with sliding panels (or curtains if preferred) for more privacy.

Your style references were quite broad and did not show one clear defined preferred style, so my aim was to somewhat blend some of your style guides and create something that had a little stronger character since it is going to be a short term rental space, and statistically speaking places with a stronger sense of style tend to do better on that market.
From your images I took some industrial style guides and blended it with a more contemporary clean minimalist approach, having the roughness and coziness from the industrial style and cleanness and simplicity from the contemporary that better matches the space and the use you're aiming for.


Hope you like my proposal. if you decide to go in this direction, feel free to contact me if you have any further questions or need some additional information.

Kind regards

Loft Milano Tricolore

residential

Milan, Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy