In a way, it was my own private Fight Club.
I redefined my own understanding of luxury by questioning my own spending habits. I stopped wasting money on unnecessary goods which resulted in saving for my own projects, travels, and a dramatic increase of my free time.
Ultimate luxury is not being a slave of banks and brands. You get there by boycotting what is usually referred to as “luxury” in our society: an excess of superfluous material goods that are advertised as desirable.
2 Design Brief
Within a small 60sqm space, create as large an open space as possible. Avoid dead corners and let the spaces freely flow into each other. Group all the technical and storage spaces out of sight.
The apartment is located in a modern landmark building from 60ies. Although original layout was heavily compartmentalized, the absence of load-bearing structure inside of the apartment allowed for a painless yet radical transformation into an open and flexible space.
I don’t understand people that decorate their living space before they move in, or even worse, let other people do it for them. By default, I completely avoided any sort of decoration, and moved into an apartment that resembled an empty gallery. Over the time, my lifestyle left marks all over the place, gradually filling the space with objects that were meaningful to me.
There is a very tight causal relation between decoration and the lifestyle – and if decoration precedes the lifestyle, it feels like living in a hotel room.
4 Interior Details
I completely avoided any fancy detailing, because I knew from experience that they would be poorly executed regardless of how hard I attempt to control the contractors. Instead, I prevented unnecessary stress and worked with simple and rough architectural details. Because it doesn’t matter really — regardless of how fancy a detail is, after a week you stop noticing it altogether.
I challenged myself to spend as little as possible, and it worked like a charm. There’s a mixture of second hand furniture and lighting, like refurbished office chairs and old kilims from my granma’s cottage house. And the big stuff like kitchen, shelves, storage space and bed — we made it in-house, just my dad and me. Cheap Ikea tin boxes double as coffe tables, old hair-dryer as a meditation speak, while trashed chairs from my school serve as a TV shelf. Only bought peaces were chairs from Konstantin Grcic that I originally planned to pair with Bertoia Side Chairs, and then I gave up the idea and spent the rest of the money on something else.
And many pieces I got trough creative exchange.
6 Creative Exchange
In exchange for bespoke lighting and accessories from artists like Ana Zarubica or Jecka I made them websites. This is what I increasingly believe in, a type of commission that doesn’t require any money transactions and instead focuses on the exchange of real values, ideas and just having fun and making friends.
Photo credits: Ana Kostic
Photos courtesy of Kvart Magazine
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