Bohrer Arquitetos Uses Curved Walls and Exposed Concrete to Set Apart a Repeated Apartment Plan in Londrina

Developer apartments have a common problem: dozens of units share one floor plan, and the interior has to work hard to make any single one feel particular. Apartment Arch 103, a 103 m² unit in Londrina, Paraná, completed in 2020 by Bohrer Arquitetos for the developer Construtora Vanguard Home, takes that problem on directly. Lead architects Thaisa Bohrer and Luiza Bohrer, working with Juliana Pimenta and Michele Sakurai, did not get to move the structure. They had surfaces, furniture, light and a few curved walls.

The interesting part is how much they get from that limited kit. Exposed concrete serves as the neutral base, but some of it is a special paint finish and some is a cladding product, Castelatto's "Aparente". Blush pinks, terracotta and mauve sit against that grey ground. Rugs take over the job walls usually do, and curves loosen a plan that would otherwise be all right angles. The result is a fit-out that reads as architecture rather than decoration, and it is worth looking at how it gets there.

Concrete as a Neutral Ground

The board-marked concrete wall behind the dining table is the anchor of the whole apartment. It carries the texture of formwork, but in an interior fit-out it is almost certainly not structural; it is a surface strategy. Splitting the effect between painted finish and Castelatto cladding is a pragmatic call. You get the weight and grain of concrete where the eye lingers, and a lighter, cheaper treatment where it does not.

What we like is the restraint around it. The long timber table, black chairs and dark bench do not compete with the wall; they sit in front of it like objects on a plinth. The fluted pink wall glimpsed beyond tells you early that the grey is a backdrop, not the whole story.

One Room, Zoned by Rugs

Integration of the social spaces was the starting premise: living, dining, a barbecue area and a gourmet kitchen all share one continuous floor. The team resisted the usual move of half-height walls or shelving screens. Instead, carpet patterns mark where one zone ends and the next begins. A coral and mauve rug claims the lounge, a grey one holds the mauve armchairs, and the pale floor between them works as circulation.

It is a soft boundary, and that is the point. Sightlines run from the kitchen island to the sofa to the planted windows without interruption, so 103 m² reads as larger than it is. The linear ceiling fixtures help too, drawing long lines that tie the zones together overhead while the rugs separate them underfoot.

The Kitchen Island as Sculpture

The island is the most assertive object in the apartment. Its angular concrete form breaks from the orthogonal cabinetry behind it, and the cooktop is set into an athermic countertop so the cooking surface stays flush with the mass. A cylindrical steel hood drops above it like a column fragment. In a gourmet kitchen that faces the living room, this matters: the island has to look good from the sofa, not only work at the stove.

The pink cabinetry and the black sink corner keep the service side quiet. Framed vase prints on the pink wall and a print hung over the concrete panel near the refrigerator are small gestures, but they tell you the kitchen is meant to be lived in as a room, not hidden as a utility.

Curves Against a Repeated Plan

Curved walls were the device chosen to set this unit apart from others with the same layout, and they do more than brand the apartment. The rounded concrete column with its black metal shelves turns a structural interruption into a display piece for plants and books. In the powder room, a curved fluted panel wraps the floating stone vanity and softens a space that would otherwise be a tight box.

The built-in desk projecting from the dusty pink wall belongs to the same logic: furniture that grows out of the architecture rather than being placed against it. These are modest moves individually. Together they shape circulation and give the plan a rhythm that the developer's drawings never had.

Bathrooms and Fluted Surfaces

The bathrooms repeat the apartment's vocabulary at a smaller scale. Two round mirrors hang from ceiling rods in front of timber blinds, floating free of the wall, which keeps the vanity zone light. Fluted glass on the shower screen and fluting on the white vanity bring texture without adding colour, and a wood-look ceiling with round downlights warms what could easily have been a clinical room.

Earth Tones in the Private Rooms

In the bedrooms, especially the master suite, the palette moves deeper into earth tones. A terracotta channel-tufted headboard, a rounded grey nightstand and glass pendants glowing against translucent blinds make the room feel enclosed and warm, a deliberate contrast to the open social floor. The concrete-look panel returns behind the television, so the material thread is never fully broken.

Storage gets the same care. The glass-fronted walk-in closet, with lit shelves and hanging rail, turns folded towels and clothes into part of the interior rather than something to conceal. The hallway desk outside the bathroom shows the team finding a use for a corridor that most plans would leave empty.

A Child's Room Built from Timber

The baby's bedroom is narrow, and the response is vertical. A slatted timber loft rises over the bed to make a reading and play area, with a perforated white panel adding a layer of privacy. A green gradient wall, letter-shaped switch plates and a long sage curtain shift the mood away from the adult palette without abandoning its softness. It is the most playful room in the apartment, and also one of the most efficient uses of floor area.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan makes the strategy legible. Two bedroom suites and the service area sit to one side, while living, dining and kitchen merge into a single field. Because the shell is standard, the plan shows how little the team needed to change: the identity of the unit lives in curves, finishes and the placement of rugs and furniture.

Why This Project Matters

Most housing in growing Brazilian cities is built as repeated units, and the interior is where residents actually experience difference. Apartment Arch 103 shows that an interior project can do real spatial work inside a fixed plan. Rugs zone space, curved walls direct movement, and a single sculptural island organizes a whole social floor.

It also offers a sensible lesson about material honesty and budget. The concrete here is partly paint and partly cladding, and the apartment does not pretend otherwise; it uses each where it makes sense. For architects handed a developer's floor plate and asked to make it singular, this is a useful reference: commit to a neutral ground, layer colour with discipline, and let a few strong moves carry the identity.

Apartment Arch 103 by Bohrer Arquitetos (lead architects Thaisa Bohrer and Luiza Bohrer), Londrina, Brazil. Area: 103 m². Year: 2020. Photography by Fellipe Lima.

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