A warehouse with many faces turns a car-sized dream into a home

Valeria MoreauINTERIOR3 months ago3.7K ViewsShort URL

On a long, narrow plot once packed with tired offices and an oversized warehouse, the client arrived with a provocation rather than a brief. They wanted a home that could absorb extremes, where the future living room might comfortably host a dozen cars, not as spectacle, but as a way to claim back space and possibility.

The existing structure read as a split personality. At the street edge, a conventional front building presented a muted facade and a jumble of small rooms scattered across two levels. Behind it, the former warehouse opened up under a gable roof, its volume held by heavy timber beams that carried the memory of work and storage more than domestic life.

The renovation responds with precision. A sequence of perimeter cuts recalibrates the project’s long footprint, reorganising the interior around five distinct “faces” that shape light, circulation, and spatial hierarchy. Between front and back, an inner courtyard becomes the turning point, separating the two parts while making their relationship legible, breathable, and inviting.

In the front building, a series of compact apartments replaces the previous disorder through subtle architectural moves, small shifts in thresholds, openings, and alignment that bring clarity without overstatement.

The warehouse, meanwhile, becomes the project’s defining gesture: a vast living room where scale is treated as a feature, not a problem. A curved wall cuts into the openness to articulate the main zone and temper the bigness with a sense of address. Nearby, a crisp kitchen anchors daily rituals, while a monumental fireplace introduces gravity, warmth, and the unmistakable cues of habitation.

Those five facets operate like a grouped set of elevations, each with its own temperament, yet bound by a shared language. A disciplined grid of black dots gives structure to the concrete surfaces, acting as both texture and measure. Across the composition, repeating pairs of windows establish rhythm, while yellow doors and green shutters inject sharp notes of colour. Glass brick surfaces amplify depth and luminosity, enriching the interior atmosphere and sharpening the identity of each face.