At first glance I was more than convinced that this apartment was perfect for the new series “-Re” Adapt. It gave me the feeling on an old house, and I could have actually bet it was an old Amsterdam house split in apartments to rent. To my complete surprise I discovered this is part of a building complex completed in 2009. And so, I must ask: Why? For the love of why? Oh, why?

Original layout:
•  Completed: 2009
Surface: 40m²

• Let’s start with the bright pink elephant in the room, the access to the balcony being done through the bathroom which can be accessed through the bedroom. Though the image of a crazy party with people drinking in the bathtub (which is gloriously absent here) and dancing through out the entire house comes to mind, unless you specifically market the apartment to 20 year old’s, this is a rather major issue.
• The bedroom is a dysfunctional space. The two doors create a circulation that splits the space in half leaving neither of the two large enough to properly contain the bed and the storage area. 

New layout:
• Obviously, the very first thing was to move the access to the balcony through the bedroom instead of the bathroom. If I have to explain why, then you’ve not been paying attention to what I’ve telling you here… The direct line between the living room door and the balcony door allows for minimal disruption and a nice distribution of the space (increased by moving the wall towards the kitchen).
• True, I sacrificed a window in the bedroom, but that gave me a nice and generous closet space.
• I love sliding doors in small spaces, and not only. The wall on which the bathroom door is located was not going to host any large furniture anyway. So instead of having a normal door that takes a full square meter away from the room, I placed a sliding door that sacrifices only the portion of the adjacent wall.
• I changed the kitchen so that the circulation space serves a double purpose by also being part of the kitchen area. This is an easy way to take advantage of all available space and easily communicate between functions. 

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