Architect Pitsou Kedem - Layers of White

May 09, 2015

The beautiful spacious, penthouse apartment was built around a central circular motif that divides the residence into two parts, with a narrow long corridor that in essence, divides the home into two distinct wings.

Uniting the two sections and transforming the concrete nucleus into a connection between the spaces, the architect covered it with dynamic, geometrically shaped textures, especially designed for the project. The cladding is three dimensional and made from large sheets of white painted aluminum hung on the nucleus’s ceiling. The apartment’s spaces were designed to create a meditative atmosphere with monochromatic sheets all based on the color white. Through a play on light and shadow and textures, multiple layers of white are created, displaying many varied and deep hues of white.

The apartments screen walls, originally small aluminum squares, were exchanged for huge windows with no horizontal divisions that allow the urban landscape to burst into the apartment’s spaces. The city’s dynamism richness of color and differing landscapes find expression in the monochromatic, almost monastic space that seems to invite the urban environment to coalesce with the apartments design. Layers of pure, soft white, appears to have taken on a different frequency and strengths from the city beat. The geometric shapes in the form of clusters of triangles reverberates, despite its whiteness, with the city’s pulse and energy. The same triangular clusters appear as a motif on the balcony’s green wall that was also designed for the apartment and in which, plants were placed in similar geometric frames.

The apartments light fittings complete the appearance of the apartment’s lines. Long, thin strips of light emphasize the linear axis along the length of the corridor and ceiling fixtures, making it appear as works of origami that compliment the triangular, three dimensional walls. Hidden lighting is installed along the walls emphasizing the surfaces of the triangles, creating from the central wall a wall that is sculptural and dramatic. The apartment’s various layers of white create depth and geometric forms against a pure backdrop. The designer’s choice of a monastic and silent environment provides the perfect backdrop for a space to encompass the entire city seen on the horizon.