St George Duplex

The brief was deceptively contained: a kitchen and stair renovation in a duplex on St. George Street. The challenge was that the kitchen was very small, the stairs were dark and walled off, and the two were fighting each other for the same limited space. The solution required treating them not as separate problems but as a single architectural condition.

The wall enclosing the staircase was opened up and replaced with a perforated metal screen — transparent enough to borrow light and space from the second floor, structured enough to define the kitchen's edge and serve as a stair guard. A slim custom storage unit was built against it, reclaiming the boundary as a working element of the kitchen and adding a secondary prep surface when needed. The kitchen was redesigned with a Scandinavian palette: textured walls, off-white cabinetry, white metal railings, and a material warmth that made the room feel larger than its footprint. Every square foot was accounted for.

The staircase, once a dark afterthought hidden behind a wall, became the focal point of the second floor — the perforated screen catching light, the storage integrating seamlessly, the whole composition reading as deliberate rather than improvised. It is a small project executed with the precision that small projects demand most.