yinjispace

INTERIOR
Agata Melerska
PHOTOGRAPHY
Oni Studio
EDITOR
Bingyi
Collection

In our exchange with Agata Melerska Studio, we encountered a rare kind of spatial expression—one that doesn’t begin with heavy-handed concepts or rush to assert visual tension, but instead focuses on structural order, material warmth, and the subtle relationship between emotion and inhabitant.Agata believes that every project should begin with “an understanding of place.” Whether it’s the architectural context or the rhythm of daily life, these are essential cues in her design process. As she told us, “What matters more than functional logic is the emotional response a space evokes.” This, too, is what struck us most deeply in her work.

The KMA Apartment can be entered from one of the central streets that constitute the grid of old Mokotów. Here, streets consist of simple blocks of buildings with a 1940s look. Surroundings are green, simple and filled with sounds of the city. We are only 3 kilometers from the center of Warsaw. Interior of the apartment was designed by Agata Melerska in cooperation with Alicja Pieczykolan, both living in Warsaw. Investors knew their previous work so designers had freedom of creativity in this space. They knew from the very beginning that it would feature modernism and that it would be a setting for a Warsaw couple to live in.

The 69-meter apartment in a post-war tenement old Mokotów house had an ideal layout. Doors on both sides of a long hall lead to independent rooms: a living room, kitchen and bedroom. Bathroom is located on the opposite side to the entrance of the apartment. “I decided to remove one wall to connect the kitchen with the living room,” Agata says.

Carefully selected furniture and lamps referring to the period of modernism in Poland and throughout Europe are a very important part of the whole project. Agata wanted them to become the foreground objects and the wholeness to be a raw background for these unique objects. On the walls she used mineral grainy plaster.

The kitchen is a single block made of plywood oiled in a reddish shade. Countertop is made of the same material as the rest of the furniture so that only the steel appliances stand out. Kitchen’s parquet floor was custom-made in the same size as the previous. The warm brown colour is repeated in the wooden table with walnut veneer (Italian furniture from the 50s) and the seats of the leather chairs (design MG05 by Matteo Grassi).

Bedroom can be entered from the hall. There is a unique desk purchased together with the apartment located by the window. It is probably from the 1920s or 1930s. Its massive shape is broken by an openwork chrome chair designed in 1928 by Rene Herbst. A similar model can also be found in New York's MoMA. By the bed, USM cabinets stand in white and chrome, as simple as the design of the bed itself. Like materials used in the living area, a simple shelf made of stained plywood hangs opposite the bed. The wardrobe is made of veneer, of birch with forged handles.

The parquet and interior joinery were very well preserved, the doors (some with original door handles) could only be refreshed. The designer made custom-made terrazzo window sills because the original ones were replaced with wooden successors. Strong black linear accents, quarter rounds at the floor, frames-jambs painted by hand with glossy oil paint or the frame around the headboard of the bed: they all determine the form and integrate the individual elements.

Bathroom is austere and simple. The walls have the same plaster as in the entire apartment, square tiles are in off-white colour. Chrome appears in the frame of the washbasin, faucets and a hanging lamp with a milky shade. The shower cubicle is separated by transparent glass blocks. On the floor the pattern is created by tiles made of natural granite rolled up on the walls creating a high plinth referring to modernist wainscoting.

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