L Residence

The use of “virtual poché” in Baroque Architecture to hide service spaces is updated through an emphasis on thinness and surface instead of solidity and mass. This filmmaker’s apartment reinterprets the use of poché to support Baroque theatricality and proposes instead a cinematic architecture of sequence and frame. Poché – a French term referring to the solid mass in heavy load-bearing walls – is reinterpreted as a spatial alternative to the open loft apartment, thus separating public and private spaces.

The apartment occupies the top floor of a converted Art Deco hotel. We conceived the living space as pseudo-exterior, pushing private and utilitarian spaces behind a wall of CNC cut oak veneer. To contrast the crisp wood wall, we treated other spaces with a volumetric application of color such as the “blue zone” of the virtual poché. Bathrooms and bedrooms have unique colors so that each space takes on its own personality. A private roof deck above is accessed from stairs in the compressed space of the poché, again referencing the Baroque.