Apartment 55 is a minimal interior located in Beijing, China, designed by Atelier About Architecture. This is an architectural renovation project designed for working requirements and living conditions of an artist. The apartment is located on the top floor of a five-story building. The owner wants to keep the existing courtyard and ensure the functions of work, reception, exhibition and daily life at the same time. His studios require an absolute sense of privacy, thus it takes a great amount of consideration about the position of the painting, the angle of the light and the vision of the artist himself. The biggest challenge of this project is how to renovate and make rooms for all functions within the limits of the carrying capacity of the original structure. After reorganizing the spatial arrangement, they redefined the building and courtyard, and rearranged the horizontal and vertical circulation. The added load is controlled within nine tons after the calculation of the whole structure. The brand-new steel structure is “tied” to the original concrete frame so that it can not only avoid negative impact on the original structure but also play a certain role of enclosure.

As for the circulation and spatial planning, it starts at the main entrance and goes inward to the public areas (reception room, exhibition room), and transitioning towards the semi-public areas and private areas (living room, studio).  In order to provide visibility and accessibility for the visitors, they can experience the transformation of spatial properties through the opening and closing of the sliding doors, the position and transparency of the window, and combining the transitional spaces between the stairs and corridors. The architects designed three studios for the artist in the working area, and it constructs different creative spaces with various atmosphere by controlling the height through the new steel structure, the position of the window and the size of the room, the effect on the light environment through the reflection between the nature light and wall. In order to increase the sense of privacy of the space, the new curtain wall starts at 5.6 meters at the elevation of inner courtyard, which means that there are no windows at eye level of the reception area on the first floor, making the whole courtyard a homogeneous open-air exhibition space. A staircase leading to the large studio on the second floor is hidden behind the facade as a transition space. The glass facade combines the courtyard and daylight into a glass box full of natural light, therefore filter the direct sunlight comes into the large studio, and making the light softer in the meantime. Skylight renders the emotional changes and ritual sense of transition from the public/semi public space on the first floor to studio/private space.

Photography by Sun Haiting