Loft VANGUARD
One of the smaller lofts at Vanguard Prague could easily have been divided by a full mezzanine floor. We decided not to. Sacrificing the height of the industrial space just to gain a few extra square metres felt like a bad deal. Instead, we arranged the interior according to how much height each function actually needs. The bathroom and toilet sit upstairs at full height, with storage below. The sleeping area is placed above the kitchen and entrance. The main living space can therefore remain open all the way up to the original concrete ceiling. A bit of Tetris, just at 1:1 scale.
Stairs as Storage
In a small loft, there is not much room for things that only perform one function. So the staircase is not just a way upstairs. It also becomes shelving, a bookcase and storage.
We tucked the kitchen underneath the sleeping platform. Conventional wall cabinets would have made it feel unnecessarily heavy, so we used the cavity behind the worktop instead. Recessed doors conceal storage inside a space that was already there.
Instead of a conventional balustrade, we stretched a white safety net along the upper level. It is light, almost disappears and, most importantly, does not turn the mezzanine into another enclosed box.
White is not used here as decoration. It separates the new intervention from the original industrial shell. We look at the same principle in more detail in our article White in interior.
Height Follows Function
A bedroom does not need four metres above the bed. A bathroom does — or at least enough height to avoid walking around bent over. That is why the sleeping platform is lower while the bathroom next to it has a full-height ceiling. Reeded glass in white frames separates it from the bedroom. Light passes through; everything else, not quite so much. Varying the height of each zone allowed us to keep the main living area open all the way to the ceiling. Instead of creating a conventional mezzanine with two evenly divided levels, we designed a structure that responds to what actually happens in each part of the loft.
From Concept to Built Interior
This loft was originally developed as one of our model concepts for Vanguard. We were not designing for a particular owner, but testing how one of the smaller loft typologies could actually work as a place to live. The visualisations helped us test the spatial arrangement of the mezzanine, the contrast between the white insert and raw concrete, and just how many functions we could squeeze into a single structure. By the time it came to construction, there was not much left to reinvent. We simply built the Tetris.
Vanguard Goes Beyond a Single Loft
We have worked on Vanguard since 2017 and know the building from basement to rooftop. For PSN, private investors and individual owners, we have designed nine loft interiors, the reception, shared spaces and wellness in the original civil-defence shelter. Every brief was different, as were the size, height and intended use of each space. Explore all OOOOX projects for VANGUARD and see how we approach the selection, design and delivery of a specific loft.
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Martina - 31. 8. 2026