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Bold Oval Does All the Work in Antwe’s Precision-Tuned Apartment

By Brittany Foster 3 min read
Bold Oval Does All the Work in Antwe's Precision-Tuned Apartment - bold oval apartment
Bold Oval Does All the Work in Antwe’s Precision-Tuned Apartment

A single oval changes everything in this 130-square-metre apartment by Antwe. The curved volume does the heavy lifting, separating the entrance from the kitchen-living zone and creating a continuous circular loop that houses almost every functional necessity. Inside the rounded geometry sits a coat wardrobe on one side and a storage room packed with technical systems on the other.

Turn to face the kitchen-living area and the same volume becomes the kitchen itself: folding facades that, when closed, present a clean, minimalist mass with zero visual clutter. Antwe kept the surface below ceiling height to read as an object within a larger open space, rather than just introducing another wall. Wrapped in Merbau veneer under a high-gloss lacquer, the curved surface faces the windows and does something rather lovely: it multiplies the light, bouncing the city and sky back into the room.

Reflection becomes a running theme. A large entrance mirror captures the apartment’s main visual axis; at sunset, the whole interior floods with soft pink. Art is doing real work here, not merely decorating. A commissioned epoxy resin piece anchors the kitchen-living sightline at its vanishing point; another glows in the master bathroom beside rounded door reveals.

Red arrives as a deliberate jolt against the cool monochrome—a bold shoe cabinet in the bedroom, Persian Red travertine, and a translucent resin sink in the guest WC that throws crimson light across the floor. It is, frankly, immaculate. Patagonia quartzite, satin stainless steel, microcement underfoot—every sample reportedly sweated over, sometimes five paint tests deep.

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Making Space for Life

Which raises the honest question this level of precision always raises: where does the living happen? When the kitchen folds away and the wardrobes disappear into the curve, is there room left to be messily, gloriously at home? Antwe’s answer is built into the plan—movable furniture and a children’s room that splits into play and sleep zones and grows with the child. The control, it turns out, is what makes the looseness possible.

This approach mirrors how many modern homes struggle to balance structure with the chaotic reality of daily life. The desire for a perfectly curated aesthetic often conflicts with the need for a space that can handle clutter, noise, and the unpredictable nature of a child’s growth. By using a singular, sculptural element to organize the floor plan, Antwe attempts to solve both problems simultaneously. The design forces a certain order on the apartment, yet the movable elements and the dedicated play area suggest an acceptance that perfection is not the goal.

Whether it reads as a home or a very beautiful idea of one is the kind of thing only its occupants can answer.

Brittany Foster

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