Apartment Bartha.
A turn-of-the-century apartment in District VI, reduced to its bones and rebuilt around a single oak workbench. Three rooms, one material family.
The brief
A flat for two writers and one cat.
The owners had lived in the building for fourteen years. They wanted the rooms to do less, and last longer.
Square metres
74 sqm, three rooms, original 1903 parquet underneath three later floors.
Timeline
Twenty months from brief to walk-through. Four months on site.
Material family
Lime plaster, white oak, brushed brass, raw linen.
Team
Anna Vass (lead). Plasterer: Géza Molnár. Joinery: Workshop Brno.
The room
One bench, twelve metres, every function.
The owners wrote at the same table every day. We removed three internal walls and replaced them with a single twelve-metre oak workbench that runs the depth of the apartment — desk, dining table, kitchen counter, library.nnThe rest of the rooms are deliberately under-furnished. The bench does enough.
In the apartment.
Photographed eight months after move-in, in late-morning light.
After
A note from the owners.
“We thought a renovation would mean a year of decisions. It meant four. The rest of the time, MÅNE asked us to sit in the empty rooms and tell them what we still wanted. We did not want very much.” — Emília and Pál Bartha
A project like this in mind?
Residential briefs of 50–120 sqm sit at the centre of the practice. The first conversation is always unhurried.