What do you do when your entrance hallway is also a closet and a kitchen? Or if your living room has to work as a dining area and office, too? How about if your main bedroom is actually more of a bed alcove?
The realities of small-space living are not lost on Lotte and Dennis Bruns, the founders of Amsterdam-based DAB Studio. The duo originally bought this small flat within a historical property on the Keizersgracht canal as a temporary home; however, due to the city’s hectic property market, they have now been living here for four years.
Located in the back of the old canalhouse, their home has its limitations – a low-beamed ceiling and a split-level layout that reminded Dennis of his parents’ house – but it also presented an opportunity for inventive thinking.
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‘It’s forced Lotte and I to come up with special solutions,’ agrees Dennis. ‘Initially we wanted to adjust the layout,’ he admits, but instead the changes they have made are softer, more decorative, but still transformative.
A large, built-in cabinet in the living room has been reimagined as a wardrobe, providing storage space that their bedroom (with its raised sleep space) simply cannot. Meanwhile the kitchen, although bijou, has been made special by a patch of patterned floor tiles and custom-designed cafe curtains that are used instead of cupboard doors.
Lotte and Dennis’s biggest success, though, has been the curation of a comforting yet eclectic furniture collection. Contemporary and vintage pieces were picked up on Marktplaats, the Netherlands’ biggest online secondhand marketplace. ‘Ultimately, the furniture, styling and artworks make an interior,’ says Dennis. ‘With our work we travel through time, between vintage and modern design, in search of the right balance for every interior.’
In their own private sanctuary, that time-hopping journey translates into a joyous mix of eras – a 1970s ‘Sesann’ sofa by Gianfranco Frattini and a ‘Hill House’ chair by art-nouveau master Charles Rennie Mackintosh, as well as notable pieces from the 1940s and 50s.
‘We don’t have a fixed style,’ confirms Dennis. What he and Lotte do have, however, is a very definite aim: ‘We believe that everyone deserves an interior that inspires. One could say that the letters D-A-B stand for Design, Architectural and Balance; Decorative, Artistic and Bold; Different, Authentic and Brave.’ This place may not be the couple’s forever home but, for them and their newest family member, short-haired Viszla Hazel, it demonstrates what’s possible in any space. dabstudio.nl
