Minimalist style apartment for a family of four

Condominium
Bathroom, Dining Room, Hall, Kitchen, Living Room
Minimalistic

Minimal in furnishing with bare and undecorated spaces – this is a home one would not expect from a family as its occupants.

For this couple with a young child and a newborn, the atypical Minimalist home called KOA apartment, is their dream space materialized. Their wish was to have a home that is free of the norm, and is defined by their notion of how they wish to live.

Taipei-based architecture practice Marty Chou Architecture has carved out the apartment’s interior with a strip of deep-recessed windows to increase exposure daylight and create private sleeping quarters. The team sought to conceive the apartment in a sculptural manner that can create alternative interior spaces.

Open-plan interior and flexible spaces

At 90m² and located in Taipei, the entire area is completely open, allowing the owners a free flow of space that suits a multiple of functions from sleeping and lounging to dining, work and play areas. The open plan interior utilizes hidden cabinets as storage and a strip of deep-recessed windows surrounded on four sides. Sliding doors open and close these spaces when the need for privacy is required.

At the center, a 3.5-meter countertop is the anchor of the space, serving as a multi-functional table. The recessed windows receive constant northern-light by day, and transition into private bedrooms when closed at night.

The bathroom and toilet are a play of geometrical volume and framed-view composition. The countertop and furniture, with their abstract appearance, resemble stone slab, woodblock, and clay. The architects treated them as sculptural pieces within the space. There is no definite spatial division within the space.

“At this stage of our lives, spaces for sleeping, seating, eating, and sanitary activities can be stripped down to the bare essentials. We wish to have more space for our children to run freely, as well as to have a large table that everyone can gather around to spend time together. If possible, we wish to live in a modern gallery of sorts; simple, calm, and filled with light, in which the spaces are left to the imagination as we fill them with life for the years to come.”

Photography by Kyle Yu Photography