The House, Divided.
On the upper floor of a property in Chiavari undergoing a gradual residential redevelopment, one existing apartment became two.
Atelier 8 reconfigured the floor entirely — entrances, circulation, services and the sequence of rooms — to create two fully independent residences, each with its own front door. Interior design and art direction then gave each home its own identity, down to tile, wallpaper, joinery, furniture and light.
Above them, the roof.
- Location
- Chiavari, Liguria
- Project
- Residential redevelopment
- Phase
- I
- Intervention
- 1 apartment → 2 independent residences
- Scope
- Architectural planning, interior design, art direction
It began as one apartment.
Tall ceilings, cornices, windows onto the hills, and a plan drawn for a single household.
We drew a line through it.
Two entrances. Two complete sequences of rooms, set within the original proportions.
One floor. Two homes.
Drawing the line.
The plan came first: where to divide, where each entrance falls, and how light, services and circulation are shared out, so that neither home ends up as the leftover half.
The building’s character stayed where it was: the ceiling heights, the mouldings, the tall windows. The division works with them, not against them.
Same bones, two temperaments.
The architecture is common to both homes. Everything placed within it was allowed to differ: palette, pattern, furniture, mood.
Colour, concentrated.
The bathrooms carry the strongest identities. Ochre, burgundy, green and blue run in bands of glazed tile, and each room is drawn as a single gesture.
And then there is the roof.
A terrace open to the hills, the rooftops and the Ligurian sky. Less an amenity than another room, only without the walls.
Phase I ends here. The house does not.
Two years later, we returned for three more homes.