SALON: As far as I know, the classics in such small spaces usually do not. First, it is not accepted; secondly, difficult. Why did you take on this project?

Alexander Kozlov: When I saw this apartment, I was even confused at first, because I had already made objects for these customers and knew that they were classical adherents and would like to execute this apartment in the classical style, and there is nowhere to turn around. But, after thinking a little, I turned to good old England. Not in the sense of introducing the English style, but in the sense of how you can adequately make a beautiful residential interior in a very limited space. In London, residential architecture does not change, it was formed many centuries ago, and people still buy apartments in old houses. The area of ​​apartments, as a rule, does not exceed 60-70 square meters. My task at this facility could be formulated as follows: a beautiful compartment in an ordinary train.

S: A good comparison for the classics. However, it is possible in more detail, what is from the classics here, and what from the English style?

 - From the English style, first of all, the desire to place in the small apartment as much as possible convenient and favorite things. Secondly, the decor: we took purely English wallpaper with floral and geometric patterns. If we talk about classicism, it is present in the ornament on curtains, puffs and mirrors. This is a classic pattern resembling a pomegranate flower. In a small living room, we could not leave the feeling of a narrow, wedged space. Since the ceiling here is 3.2 meters, we had to visually lower it a little. For this we made a flower frieze around the perimeter of the entire room. Curiously, in small spaces, standard design principles do not work. We have to come up with some interesting moves every time.

S: You want to say that here is the opposite?

 - Yes. If you pay attention to the design of the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, we first wanted to use a mirror. But if we took the usual silver mirror, then it would break through the space, and the whole it would not look. And we came up with such a mirror design, so that it, on the one hand, added space to the interior, and on the other, still remained the border of the kitchen and living room. To do this, the mirror first aged a little, and then put on it the same pattern as on the upholstery of curtains and pouf.

S:Alexander, why is the kitchen modern?

 - Here I was guided not only by stylistic decisions. I believe that appliances and everything related to modern equipment are closer to modern style, therefore, the kitchen is also modern. But the color of wooden facades was matched to the floor, doors and other wooden elements in the apartment; precisely in order that with its modernity the kitchen does not argue with the classical style.

S: The area of ​​the bedroom here is only 16 square meters. And here they put a roomy bed two for two - not too much?

 - Honestly, it is very difficult to imagine a classic bedroom without a baroque frame, without light velvet, without beautiful finishes, so the first thing we came up with for this bedroom was this bed. Of course, she was too big for this room. And we had to smooth out the imbalance using wallpaper with a very large decor. Against the background of such a large pattern, the size of the bed is no longer so striking.

S: What was the most difficult for you to work on this project?

 - Search for a compromise between the desire to make an honest classic and reality. In the classics, each room must live its own life. Bedroom, living room, nursery, office - each has its own color scheme. In this apartment we could not afford it: the space was united, and one color should flow into another. But we left one principle of building a classic interior - we added bright color accents.

Alexander Kozlov:“It was really an experiment. First, the apartment looks more like a studio, and studio apartments are often minimalist. In our case, this style had nothing to do with the owners’s lifestyle. Secondly, the young hostess’s requirements they were not ascetic: they needed an apartment not just with classical furniture, but with the atmosphere of classics, everything had to be elegant, subtle, there was also a spacious dressing room, romantic bedroom, comfortable kitchen, beautiful bathroom ... "