Warsaw is a city that has become accustomed to starting from scratch. In just the last century, the Polish capital has done it twice: reconfigured from rubble in the post-war years, it structurally transformed in the following decades, too, its medieval Old Town now interspersed with towering glass skyscrapers, Soviet-era monumental landmarks, and balanced modernist blocks in a seamless continuum between old and new.
For a restless and richly textured apartment in this resurgent city, the creatives at Furora Studio have done just that — tearing up an existing floor plan to reorganize and reclaim a space, designing it exactly for the rhythm of family life today.
Based in Poland themselves and no stranger to far more dramatic renovations, design duo Diana Żurek and Gutek Girek immediately understood their client’s need for an interior step-change. The starting point was breaking up a closed-off home layout: rather than retaining disparate spaces and isolated zones of boxed-in living, the two embraced the project within a “complete spatial narrative”, fostering warmth and character through considered continuity.
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A kaleidoscope of colors converts a fragmented residence into an entirely new form — one that, in the designers’ words, is “genuinely alive”.
(Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio)
According to Gutek, the apartment’s pre-existing problems were clear from the start; its original layout had favored storage above the social pulse of the home, with a web of rooms that had long sat fragmented, cut-off, and enclosed.
Step inside now, and this new spatial reconfiguration justifies itself almost instantly. An inviting entry corridor draws the guest intelligently through the space, offering up a terracotta-framed window into the life that lies just beyond.
In the direction of the living room, a narrowing passage opens, with quite deliberate surprise, into the apartment’s generously open-plan social epicenter, which waits, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for the action.
This new path of invitation earns comparison with a theatrical experience: you “walk through the wings before reaching the stage”, Diana explains.
And this stage is certainly a grand one. Stark white walls are less a backdrop than a canvas, allowing each design piece its moment in the spotlight. Here, a tension between Polish sensitivity and Brazilian temperament begins to emerge: a “tug of war” for a family that enjoys time in both places.
The eclectic decorative decisions were “not the result of a compromise”, adds Diana, but rather a genuine expression of the owners’ tastes; they capture a sense of creative friction that sits well within their comfort zone.
Animalistic references — a snake or leopard-like character that recurs throughout the property — tease and paw at that sense of play. A contrast to the classic chevron parquet of the living room, the floor tiles in the corridor do so, too, challenging the traditional with a zebra (or giraffe?) pattern.
The littlest of touches are intentionally “misbehaving” and, in this new domestic landscape, allow the residence to feel “genuinely alive”.
Thoughtfully un-patterned textures are revived through brightly-colored side tables and a collection of children’s toys.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
Paired with tiles that resemble the print of a zebra or giraffe, this leopard stool injects a sense of play and childlike humor, fit for this family.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
The hiss of a softly-textured snake is the only detail allowed to disturb this peaceful parental retreat.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
“The home naturally fills with books featuring beautiful, colorful covers, children’s toys, and objects brought in by different members of the family,” the designers add — all in a reference to the human “attitude” that informed their creative direction.
And then, of course, there are the bold choices in color, a drastic departure from Poland’s long history of functional approaches to interiors. The shift, here, can be seen as one aspect of a gradual move away “from a single accepted idea of what a well-designed apartment should look like”, Diana says. A change that, for the designer, can be felt across the country.
Warsaw’s buzzing restaurant scene is behind much of that turning point, according to Gutek, with hospitality fast-emerging at an “exceptionally high design level”. These new social spaces are “diverse, imaginative, and shaped not only around the location, but also around the food they serve”.
Interior design, he explains, is now far better understood as a spatial and textural extension, rather than simply scene-setting for the menu.
Collected artefacts and possessions define this apartment, allowing the character and ‘attitude’ of the homeowners to project.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
Elsewhere in the apartment, we notice furniture quite literally climbing up the white-washed walls through creaturesque designs evoking joy, comfort, and fun.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
Bar Rascal, at the crossroads of the city center and its old town, or restaurant Opasly Tom, are exemplary of the current moment. The establishments are the kind of place increasingly packed with Warsaw’s next generation of artists, architects, writers, filmmakers, and chefs — a growing demographic of creatives returning to their home city, many having lived and made work abroad but now choosing this new metropolis over Paris, Berlin, or London.
Furora Studio is based predominantly in Kraków and enjoys that lens of distance from their capital. “Because we don’t visit Warsaw every day, we’re able to see it with fresher eyes each time”, Diana explains. “These places can still surprise us, and that is precisely what makes them inspiring.”
It’s not hard to see just how much this pair relishes that notion of surprise.
Polish designers Diana Żurek and Gutek Girek of Furora Studio reject trends and ready-made solutions, instead testing “unusual forms” infused with “personal character and timeless dimension”.
(Image credit: ONI Studio)
In the family apartment they designed, a tiered chandelier by Finnish brand Hakola — in pink, blue, green, yellow, and orange — hangs precariously as a daring centerpiece, near resembling an upside-down birthday cake; a shy-looking USM sideboard sits across from a cushion with the message “WHATEVER” stitched up in punchy blue and pink on its surface; a graphic, geometric rug is desperate for attention, while a swooping toy car track tops a deep red and sand-tiled coffee table.
Approaching the kitchen, wall bands in shades of pink and orange mark the gentle boundaries between different spaces. Coupled with a minimal globe pendant light and told in shades of stone, the storage takes a step back and affords the dining setup its own moment — a tiled twin to its coffee table counterpart in the living room.
Spectacle aside, this is all with intent. Color, here, is not about the big surfaces but the smaller ones instead: careful touches that “return in a small piece of joinery, a detail, or a frame, and become a thread that runs through the entire apartment,” share the designers.
A tiered statement chandelier holds center stage with confidence.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
One quiet corner emerges here, where a classic USM sideboard whispers — rather than shouting — topped with an Artemide Nesso Table Lamp.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
The living room bleeds right into the kitchen for a truly inviting open-plan arrangement.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
In Gutek’s words, “the rooms are not separate islands, but flow into one another”. Bespoke furniture — which does not end at the boundary of a single room — is the foundation, and color its foil.
“The furniture climbs onto the walls, passes between different zones, and connects them. In some places, it transforms into decorative frames that compose particular views, emphasizing the transitions between spaces,” continues the designer.
Those careful choices are evident once again in the corridor, which, as it winds toward the bedrooms, gradually quietens in color and texture to separate shared areas from private ones.
The master bedroom, paired with its own bathroom and tucked away from all the noise, is “almost bleached-out of the apartment, dedicated to rest”. Children’s rooms, on the other hand, are positioned in close proximity to the living room, encouraging organic participation in the daily rhythm of the home.
The master bedroom and private bathroom take a major step back from the noise.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
The Rey Chair by HAY sees Furora Studio employ a meeting of “modern restraint” with an undoubtedly “classic” touch.
Image credit: ONI Studio. Design: Furora Studio
The city outside this home is a collection of districts, each with its own personality and purpose. Even its skyline seems to argue with itself — a blank white cube of a new museum stands opposite a looming Soviet-era high-rise.
Furora Studio has, with playful precision, restaged that tension between four walls: functionalist calm that spars with restless color.
Room by room, two temperaments are finding space to coexist, and carving out a family home that’s undoubtedly more alive for the argument.
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