Coastal Apartment With Seaweed-Colored Joinery

A steel staircase offsets seaweed-colored joinery and marble surfaces inside this Belgian apartment designed by local architects Carmine Van Der Linden and Thomas Geldof. Van Der Linden and Geldof thought using natural materials and colors would reflect the calming coastal location of the two-floor apartment, which is encircled by sand dunes and grassy banks.

In the apartment’s kitchen, the backsplash, shelving and paneled birch-wood cabinets have been stained a murky shade of green. This green hue continues across a handful of wood-lined walls in the apartment and into the guest toilet, which is fitted with a Gris Violet marble basin. Alga Marina marble has then been used to craft the kitchen countertops and the surface of a central prep table. It’s supported underneath by interlocking silver-metal poles.

The architects blanketed the remaining surfaces throughout the apartment in white paint that leaves a clay-like textural finish, in hopes of fostering an “unconscious sense of silence and serenity”. Dark-grey terrazzo also runs across the floor. One wall of the living room features a sequence of shelves extending up across both floors of the apartment, offering a spot for the owner to display books or cherished ornaments. The shelves also serve as a backdrop to an open-tread spiral staircase that’s made from galvanized steel. This material was specifically chosen by Van Der Linden and Geldof as they felt it has an almost pearlescent quality. Paneled joinery, similar to what’s in the kitchen, appears again in the master bedroom upstairs, but this time in a whitish color. At this level of the apartment, there is also an almost-black sauna room that’s fronted by a panel of glazing, providing views out across the beachy landscape. Take a look at the pics of this unique apartment below!