Moscow apartment with a total area of ​​156 m2 Elena Franchyan, Boris Matveev

Passing the gallery

A photo: Kirill Ovchinnikov

Text: Evgeniya Tikhonova

Project author: Boris Matveev, Elena Franchyan, Dmitry Solomonov

Aquarium manufacture: Sergey Seregin

Finishing work: Marat Ka

Glass works (stained glass and other products): Nikolay Shirokov

Magazine: Na (80) 2004

The main function of this modern comfortable apartment is to be a source of high-grade rest. For the customer, this is primarily meeting with friends at the cocktail-party, home cinema. And - an unusual interior. The latter was one of the main conditions ... In the living room they made a special podium for a giant aquarium with exotic fish, set up "laid-back" sofas and couches ... And indeed, it turned out very unusual. The architects have exceptionally successfully chosen the type of decorative painting for interior decoration. Located in rectangular niches, the ornaments look like paintings. There is such a technique in the visual arts as the missed foreground. The viewer turns out to be inside the canvas and assesses the spatial situation in a completely different way. In this apartment we seem to be in some kind of garden and we look from the inside. The sensation is enhanced by the fact that in the center of the living room the ceiling light is decorated like wall niches: the visitor sees the conditional sky through conditional branches. (A similar technique is used in the bedroom.) In the pattern and color palette, "ardekošny" motifs are guessed; Yes, and actually the principles of working with color are characteristic of Art Deco. A style that adores art in the interior and knows how to create such an interior context for a thing, so that it itself becomes an object of art. Art Deco can be very different: it is emphasized by antique-museum, avant-garde or exotic. In this interior, a huge piranha aquarium has become an exotic dominant. A specially built podium for him, which takes up about one third of the living room space. Aquarium convex part facing the visual places home theater. On the other hand, the concave reservoir volume organizes the bar space. Another unusual solution: an aquarium, covered with a marble table top, at the same time serves as a bar counter. The exotic theme is complemented by animal skins adorning the beds in the home theater. In addition, Art Deco loves thick draperies of light transparent materials, glass tables, soft diffused light - and all this is here. The traditional layout of the apartment - the open spaces of the public area, divided by a hall into two parts, the most remote from the entrance block of private rooms - is comfortable, quiet and therefore coincides with the general stylistic setting. Peace, comfort, intelligent bourgeois - these concepts are close to the “happy style” that is in demand now.Elena Franchian: The customer wanted to get a comfortable space for outdoor activities: frequent receptions, cocktail-party. In addition, it was assumed that the apartment should be unusual. We created both comfortable and unusual space. Art Deco's “happy style” turned out to be close to the way of life and customer's worldview.