Zermak Apartment responds to an ampliation of an ampliation. The client and photographer Oscar Abarca had asked our firm for an ampliation of his house to include in his property the Zermak Photography Studio. Now he broadens the challenge inviting us to project –above the studio- an apartment for foreign students.

The request faced us with a challenge, where we could either continue the volumes of the studio, or generate a new architectonic expression. We wanted to integrate the project but differentiate it. Below a studio and above an apartment. The first one is more closed with controlled accents of light, and above, a more open space was projected, luminous and free. The new covering involves the projects and both accesses were emphasized with ascendant steel diagonal structural tubing. An access to the apartment was projected through a series of dissimilar stairs that invite to discover textures and materials. Two stripes were generated –one solid and the other translucent- divided by a linear orange element.

The internal space is flexible, ethereal and rigorously illuminated. Stand out spatially the light and narrow covering, the bedroom -divided by a glass handrail- on top of the cyclorama, and the glass floor projection that expands the apartment as the sliding door is opened. Are noticeable, in terms of light, the translucent wall illuminated internally, the glass stripe that allows illumination on the kitchen’s top in the morning, and the light cube that divides the kitchen and the bathroom and illuminates the opening located on the ceiling of the photography studio.