Area: Carpet area 471 SqFt

Location: Songbirds scheme, Bhugaon, Pune

Contractor: Pappu Sharma, Rahul Shah

Budget: 4 lakh Rupees approximate including appliances

Completion: June 2020

Project brief:

This interior was designed for minimum intervention-minimum cost- maximum impact. Functionality being the priority, the budget was focused on certain appliances and their provision. Necessary plumbing and electrical interventions in exposed piping were made for the same. A small basin was cleverly introduced in the common area such that the carpentry unit also hid the utilitarian part of the kitchen like clothes drying, vessels etc from the living room view. An old wood window was purchased from the market and reused to create an opening between the living and bedroom. The lobby to the apartment needed a shoes stand and a notional identity. A wicket gate and shoes stand were made in MS and powdercoated which made them good for exterior use. They were designed to be simply screw fit on location without having to spend more than an hour. All design details were such that it required minimum labour teams and interdependence. The apartment was repainted to fresh white. Light fittings and bedroom furniture were purchased from Ikea. The coffee table and chairs were from a distress sale of a popular cafe and were upholstered and used here. The curtain rods, and curtains were purchased online on Amazon. The artwork is Acrylic on canvas, by Sanjeev Joshi.

It was a design decision to define the carrying capacity of the apartment and to restrict it to a single independent user instead of a family. Hence providing for a dishwasher, dryer, clothes rods, small cooking stove/hotplate and a small fridge was priority, ‘small’  being the underline for everything. This ensured that the apartment felt spacious and welcoming.