Malvarosa Apartment - Living Room Furniture

The whole living-room programme sits in one wall. Closed storage, shelving, the television recess and the low unit all enter the same alignment and the same plane, and what is left of the room is the floor and the light — no piece of furniture stands on the ground competing for space with the people who live there.

The white lacquer does the background work: handleless doors, thin and constant joints, and a continuous slot in place of applied hardware wherever something has to be gripped. Against that background the walnut appears sparingly — the horizontal panel behind the sliding plane, the low console under the recess, the lining of the opening slot itself. It is the timber that marks the working heights and the white that makes the rest disappear.

At the ends the piece opens up. The glass shelves, carried on adjustable uprights, let through the light coming in from the vertical slot and turn the end of the unit into a display case, with recessed lighting picking out only that part. The ceiling follows with a flush black track aligned with the front of the unit: the light fitting is not an object in the room, it is the continuation of the same line.