A small apartment block in Luxembourg City that integrates art and architecture

Update

7/09/12

A vertically and horizontally layered facade of art and architecture.

This small apartment block in Luxembourg City designed by Metaform Atelier d’Architecture (Luxembourg) has four flats over five floors. To enhance the privacy of the occupants, the ground floor has been designated for garages as the City of Luxembourg rules that each new apartment must have its own parking space.

On the first floor there is an 80 square metre, two bedroom apartment, on the second floor there are two studio flats of 47 and 48 square metres and on the third and fourth floor a large duplex apartment with a surface area of 115 square metres.

The real interests of this building, however, are its form and aesthetic. The former has been strictly dictated by planning regulations that stipulated the building’s maximum footprint and volume. Metaform have used these regulations to play around with forms, using recesses on the ground floor to create a one metre deep overhang on the second floor. The fourth floor living space is also created within the allowed space of a pitched roof.

As for the building’s aesthetic, the architects collaborated with SUMO artists to enliven the surfaces which are usually abandoned by architects. Hence, the under surface of the cantilevered floor and inside of the loggias have been emphasised here with illuminated orange artworks. This artwork, a fusion between graffiti and pop art, combined with the shiny black metal cladding give the whole building a sort of gritty-chic.