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At Das Haus, Studio Truly Truly imagines a home of many moods

BOOKMARK ARTICLE

Das Haus, the model house representing one studio's take on trends in living space, has become the cherry-on-top of international interiors show, imm Cologne. Its eighth edition, from 14 - 20 January, has been envisioned by Australian product designers Kate and Joel Booy of Rotterdam-based Studio Truly Truly.

Measuring 180 sq-m (Pure Editions, Hall 3.1), Truly Truly's Haus features welcoming textures, a limited but sunny palette of colors and tactile materials. Composed to promote the greatest behavioral flexibility, it represents freedom over fixation, mood over routine and slowness over distraction. Inhabitants dictate their own relationship to the house, according to how they feel.

You live with your home like an organism that is regenerating slowly over time, accommodating your new activities

The facade of the house alternates between being open and closed and is made from a textile that forms welcoming curved corners and contrasts with the crisp lines of the rest of the exterior.

Outside, the house has a graphical facade made of radiused textile walls that contrast with the intersecting planes of more solid walls (although these walls, too, have an emphatically tactile quality). Inside, the plan comprises four zones, each a different 'mood' established by warm colors, textures, materials and lighting. The Active, Reclining, Reclusive and Serene areas are not separated by walls, but by partitions, one a rattan screen and the other a mirrored glass divider. 'The floor plan grew out of the innate qualities of each of these spaces,' explained Joel. 'The Active space allows interaction between people and facilitates all types of activities, so it is open and spacious. On the other hand, the Reclusive space allows you to get away from external distractions and be with your thoughts, which called for a more intimate space created from walls built entirely out of plants.'

Private areas alternate with public, opening up sightlines. Rooms merge into one another, their latent function determined by the user instead of being assigned by furnishings. The unconventional construction of the kitchen facilitates togetherness instead of efficiency since tools for washing, preparing, cooking and serving food are separated.

Using warm materials and colors, and tactile surfaces, Studio Truly Truly will also display a number of their own new prototypes in Das Haus, ranging from knitted throws, a minimalist oak bed, seating and tables to a mirrored divider shelf and two of their lighting fixtures.

This abstraction and ambiguity give inhabitants the agency to alter their home as it suits them. Around what, in another house, might have been the dining table, they placed a couple of typical dining chairs in warm wood and leather alongside some aesthetically very technical task chairs. 'People are not only dining at the dining table. They might work on their laptop on the couch or on their phones in bed, consuming entertainment on various devices in any number of places around the home, no longer centered around a TV,' said Joel. 'By planting these contrasting signals throughout the space, we want to trigger a new sense of how the spaces and objects could be used.'

The house lets its occupants blur the line, or not, between public and private, work and leisure, chore and spontaneity.

imm-cologne.com

livingkitchen-cologne.com

studiotrulytruly.com

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