Parmagade 4 consists of twelve apartments that are located above a communal sports hall which again is located above two grocery stores. Designed by Dorte Mandrup Architects, this mixed-use building is a wonderful example for how urban density can be achieved through quality instead of just building in height. As the apartments are long and stretched, they would otherwise only receive light from the south and north. Mandrup therefore added an atrium in the middle of each apartment, introducing an additional source of natural light and a rare quality for apartments in the city: a private courtyard where no one can look in.
 

The apartment is inspired by a Berlin approach to living: walls left untouched, no unnecessary interventions, few but meaningful objects. There is a certain temporariness to it, the awareness that this is a space for now, not forever. It’s somewhere between laziness and elegance, doing the minimum and having it be enough. The pinnacle of this are the USM shelves: simple, cold, functional and sturdy enough to survive the next move. And yet there they are, precise and elegant, a quiet admission that you do care about how it all looks.