The roofs of Podil

Project Area - 50 sq m

Project Year - 2022

Location - Podil, Kyiv, Ukraine

The apartment is a typical Piede-à-Terre* for a family couple who live in a private house in a Kyiv suburb and often come to Kyiv on weekends to immerse themselves in cultural life and spend time with their children and friends. The designer faced the task of turning the technical shortcomings of the room into its advantages, placing everything necessary in the space between the metal columns and the walls. The interior of the apartment corresponds to the context of Podil, one of the most picturesque districts of Kyiv. *Piede-à-Terre is a French expression that means an apartment in the city, which is at some distance from the principal residence and is used as a hotel or place of temporary stops.

The attic space under the roof had some design features that must be considered. The beams and metal columns were left exposed, only partially hidden behind shelves in the living room and closets in the bedroom. That was how the designer turned the apartment's shortcomings into its advantages.

Apartment owners like to cook and host guests, so they need a comfortable and functional kitchen and a cozy living room. "The light sofa and armchairs, the shape of the table and chairs were not chosen by chance - it was important not to burden the space with massive objects. Instead, I wanted to create a light, airy atmosphere of life under the roof," the designer shares.

The clients chose an apartment in Podil as their city residence because that district of Kyiv reminds them of Kherson, where they both came from. Kherson is a resort town by the sea in southern Ukraine. Podil also has a light and eclectic character and access to the water – the Dnipro embankment. Podil is one of the city's oldest districts, which in ancient times was a center of craftsmen and traders. A district that willingly welcomed visitors from all over, mixing cultural traditions and forming its cosmopolitan flavor. The area retains a powerful adventurous charm to this day. The architecture of Podil is eclectic and sometimes whimsical. Modern buildings there are adjacent to restored buildings of the early 20th century. Numerous cafes and shops occupy the first floors. Luxury high-rise hotels are rising near empty industrial shops. The pearls of Podil are the monuments of modernism: the Zhytniy Market building and the Zhovten cinema. On the eighth attic floor of a new building near the legendary cinema, there is an apartment with a fantastic view of the rooftops of Podil.

– I aimed to convey the cultural context of Podil through the interior. To mix, taking as a basis the elements of classical and modernist architecture, add the colors of constructivism and the background wood inherent in the decoration of attic rooms. – says designer Yana Molodikh.

One of the "airy" accents was the Akari floor lamp from Vitra (designed by Isamu Noguchi).

The bedroom is the smallest room, with an area of 6.4 square meters. It has everything for a comfortable stay: a bed raised on a podium, a wardrobe behind a column in a niche, shelves and drawers near the bed. The massive beam on the ceiling was sewn into a plasterboard box to visually lighten it and avoid the feeling of a heavy metal structure overhead.

The color range of the interior is a combination of light wood shades with modernist accents of red, black, blue, terracotta and white colors. The walls are painted with Argile paint from the "earth colors" collection with a warm shade of wet clay. "As a child, I helped my grandmother whiten the walls of the house in Polissia with clay diluted with water. Our whitewash had just the same warm shade of white." - Yana Molodikh shares.

The owners of the apartment are a married couple in their early 60. After retiring after 35 years in the IT industry, the husband became fond of woodcraft and equipped a small workshop for this in their house. The wife is a marketer by profession and has also recently retired. The couple enjoys listening to jazz, traveling, cooking, and entertaining guests. The son of the apartment owners, Vadim, and his wife, Lisa, have their own craft wood furniture workshop "Buro 150". They were the ones who advised the parents to invite Yana Molodykh as a designer for their apartment. While creating furniture for her previous projects, Vadym and Lisa realized their worldviews coincided. Therefore, working on the apartment with the designer would be an exciting project for their parents. So it was.

The entrance area has tiles on the floor and a blue accent door. That small hallway is a buffer space between the street and the house. There is also a separate dressing room, where the wardrobes are inserted between the structures of beams and columns.

It was essential for the apartment owners to have a bathtub and a shower cabin. Tiles in the bathroom are a tribute to constructivism. "I mixed collections of four different brands of tiles to reproduce the aesthetics, shape and color inherent in constructivism. Accents were terracotta ceramic sconces on the wall – an object created by the Ukrainian designer Yulia Kononenko," says Yana Molodikh.