Ritz apartment – Almaty

residential. With its thirty-seven floors, the Esentai Tower soars above Almaty, Kazakhstan’s most highly populated city.  The lower floors of the building are home to numerous offices and the Ritz-Carlton hotel, while the upper ones are private residences. Among these, the apartment designed by the Berlin studio Coordination was conceived as a haven of relaxation. The freedom of thought behind the project is immediately clear in the originality of its 220 square metre loft with single bedroom and dizzying 270-degree view of the city. The L-shaped ground plan was conceived as a continuum that would generate a hierarchy between the private and less private spaces. While the living area is the focal point of the home, the kitchen is animated by the shapes of the ebony wood furniture and floor in triangular travertine slabs, and the bedroom exploits the endless images of the view with its wall of mirrors. The furnishings of the apartment and all the other details have been specially designed by Coordination studio: the whole space is characterized by chromatic and geometric contrasts and dynamics between view and mirror reflection. Particularly original is the dressing room, where ethereal clouds stand out against polished steel panels and are reflected in sandblasted glass walls hiding an awe-inspiring wardrobe. The master bathroom is clad entirely in stone, with frosted glass doors and bronze elements. Here too the dialogue continues between the mirrors and the view over the city, made even more precious by the woodwork. Standing out like a sculpture against a darkly-coloured background is the Bjhon 1 washbasin,  the brainchild of Angelo Mangiarotti, designed in 1970 and made by Agape; in this version the white Carrara marble basin sits atop a truncated cone column.