High windows pull daylight deep into the rooms, while new French doors open the former school building to the outside. The result is a loft apartment conversion that keeps the volume of the old classrooms visible. Ceilings rise well above the usual apartment height, and the rooms respond to that scale with clear lines, pale surfaces and carefully placed openings.

Light first, then layout

The plan had to work around a difficult set of existing elements: the stairwell and corridors with their original ceramic tiles had to stay. That constraint shaped every apartment. Each space was measured down to the centimetre, so the old school fabric could remain in place without making the layout feel forced. The former classroom proportions are still readable, but the rooms now move with a different rhythm, from entrance to living area to the more private sleeping level above.

Daylight is the constant thread through the project. Tall glazing brings in a clear wash of light, and the high rooms leave room for it to spread across the floor surface and up the walls. In the living areas, the eye moves upward almost automatically, toward the sleeping lofts and the top of the stair voids. That vertical space is part of the experience; it is not hidden away, but used as structure.

A glass and steel sleeping loft in every apartment

Because the former classrooms reached six metres in height, each apartment could gain a sleeping loft without closing the space down. These lofts are built in glass and steel, so the upper level reads as a light frame rather than a heavy insertion. The material choice keeps sightlines open, allowing daylight to pass through and preserving the sense of height that defines the project. In a loft apartment conversion, that restraint matters as much as the added function.

On the ground floor, one apartment takes a different route. A 70 cm sunken lounge was excavated into the floor, creating a lowered seating area that breaks the plane of the room. The dip in the floor gives the living zone its own level without adding partitions. Nearby, oak Z-shaped stairs cut through the herringbone floor and add a tactile counterpoint to the smoother surfaces around them. The steps are practical, but they also shift the pace of the room.

Preserved tiles, stained glass and small school traces

Some of the most direct reminders of the building’s previous life sit in the shared circulation spaces. The original tiles remain visible in the stairwell and corridors, and the restored stained glass changes the light as it moves through the stair core. Old toilet doors, the school bell and the tiled surfaces all return as details rather than decorations. They are placed where they were once part of daily routine, which gives the conversion its quiet continuity.

The stairwell does more than connect floors. It holds the project together visually. Ceramic tile edges, a dark handrail and the coloured glass above create a sequence that feels rooted in the building’s past, while the cleaned-up surfaces make the route easy to read. For a project that had to fit new apartments into an existing shell, this part of the building carries the strongest memory of what came before.

Gas-free homes with a lighting plan built for height

The apartments were made gas-free, with heat pumps concealed from view. That technical layer sits behind the finish, so the rooms can stay visually calm. The homes carry an A+++ label, but the more immediate effect is spatial: nothing interrupts the clean wall lines or the open ceiling zones. In a building this tall, the lighting plan becomes essential. Mood lighting softens the evening atmosphere, while technical lighting reaches the upper parts of the rooms and keeps the height legible after dark.

Rather than relying on one type of fixture, the lighting follows the use of each zone. Living areas ask for a different level than circulation spaces, and the high ceilings needed a precise mix of ambient and functional light. That approach keeps the apartments readable from room to room. It also gives the surfaces their depth, from plaster walls to the edges of the stair voids and the darker frames around the doors.

Materials that stay close to the school’s character

Inside the apartments, the palette stays close to the old building without copying it. Green tones appear alongside terrazzo, warm poured flooring and wood. Eiken surfaces are used where the hand touches the interior most often, while the harder materials carry the floors and wet rooms. The combination is not decorative in a literal sense; it is tied to the building’s scale and to the way the rooms are used throughout the day.

Kitchen and bathroom details show the same restraint. Oak cabinet fronts sit next to a granite worktop, and the joinery lines are kept tight. In the bathrooms, the terrazzo look and stone-like surfaces echo the harder textures of the stairwell. Black steel profiles and glass doors appear where rooms need to close off, but they stay visually light. Across the apartments, the custom interior turns on those small shifts in material, not on gesture.

What the former school building gives back

What remains of the school is not treated as an accent strip; it sets the tempo of the whole conversion. The high windows, the corridor tiles and the stained glass stairwell each hold a different layer of time. New insertions — the sleeping lofts, the sunken lounge, the hidden technical systems — answer that structure rather than competing with it. The project reads as twelve separate homes, but the strongest impression comes from the shared shell that still shapes them.

In that sense, the loft apartment conversion is as much about subtraction as addition. Walls were adjusted, levels were added, and systems were concealed, but the building’s height and memory stayed in view. The old school no longer functions as it once did, yet its scale, details and sequence of spaces still organise the way the apartments are experienced. That is where the project finds its force: in the meeting point between retained fabric and new domestic life.