In Turin, Tanaka Tomidei brings new life to an apartment full of distractions

With the renovation of a 70-square-meter apartment in Turin, the Tanaka|Tomidei studio develops a system of ingenious spatial solutions that is simple but effective, managing to create a dynamic expansion of domestic spaces in a decidedly compact floor plan. The most convincing aspect of the intervention concerns the  unconventional choice of foregoing open space, in favor of a semi-open one, and the desire to preserve the more traditional element of the corridor, working rather toward its reinterpretation, giving rise to a sequence of "situations" and "distractions," as the architects of Tanaka|Tomidei themselves define them.

In detail, once crossed the entrance threshold, the living area is conceived in direct visual communication with the kitchen, but the two spaces are deliberately separated by a partition wall literally sectioned off with an inverted arch shape that frames the kitchen environment and makes it partially permeable.
Accentuating this of a measured crossing condition is the sliding table designed as a true site-specific object, a central element of domestic life, which is positioned exactly astride the two main rooms of the house, and serves as a dining and work table, a place of attraction for the rituals of everyday life. The corridor is defined in an attempt to break the traditionally closed essence of the simple servant space, generating rather a kind of promenade in the evocation of the image of the Turin galleries, and where the figure of the arch is repeated in a rhythmic multiplication of openings: on one side the actual doors of access to the rooms, on the other the wardrobes.

The general sense of estrangement due to the repetition of elements and forms culminates in the mirror placed at the end of the corridor, which again reflects the opposite image of the living room, stretching the spatial perspective.