13. April 2021
Apartment buildings for temporary living are currently en vogue. Micro-living concepts provide a modern way of living for commuters, digital nomads, tourists or students. In such concepts, lighting atmosphere is essential in conveying to users a sense of having arrived, the first time they enter the building. This succeeds at the highest level in the Jopa Joma apartments opened in Kenzingen in 2020. In the stylishly designed new-build, Nimbus, a company in the Häfele Group, ensures holistic room lighting, which, in turn, harmonises ideally with Häfele's Loox furniture lighting system.
Micro-living concepts have been en vogue in cities for quite some time. But now the first apartment buildings for temporary residence are also being built out in the country. For example in Kenzingen, where Schmidt Architekten have designed and built the “Jopa Joma”. The building comprises seven one-room or two-room apartments with sizes varying between 20 and 50 square metres, each with a small terrace or balcony. The Jopa Joma design apartments in this small town in the south of Baden attract tourists thanks to their location near the Kaiserstuhl, the Black Forest and Europapark Rust, but, being close to hubs of vibrant economic activity in and around Freiburg, Lahr and Offenburg, they are also a magnet for commuters. They all benefit from being able to use the comfortable, smooth running living space offered by Jopa Joma on a temporary basis.
The local architect Christoph Schmidt and his brother Stephan Schmidt, both managing directors at Schmidt Architekten, are the designers, project developers and operators of Jopa Joma. The interior of the gable-roofed building with its striking petrol-green facade impresses with a design-oriented concept and furnishing as well as with high-quality yet rugged materials that are able to withstand frequent changes of occupancy without suffering damage. The convincing overall concept is supplemented by lighting design that generates a generous portion of well-being for guests.
Schmidt Architekten brought Häfele on board at an early stage of the design process. The company, which has gathered a great deal of know-how in the implementation of micro-living concepts in recent years, acted as an accompanying market strategist, identified design-related and functional unique selling propositions and incorporated them into the joint design activities. Their comprehensive 360° property expertise and wide range of services from a single source promised smooth implementation of the interior fit-out. “We designed the building and, from that point on, used the entire ‘Häfele channel’ for the realisation," explains the architect Christoph Schmidt. “The diverse know-how of employees from a wide range of different fields was very valuable. Häfele understands what is important to operators of apartment buildings as well as to architects.”
The lighting design for the seven micro-living apartments in Kenzingen was implemented holistically together with the Nimbus team and Loox experts: in the premium range fitted kitchens, the Loox5 strip light system provides pleasant, glare-free task lighting on the kitchen working surface. In the sleeping zone, LEDs integrated into the bed’s headboard set clever accents during the evening time. The minimalistic ceiling luminaires from Nimbus complement the inconspicuously installed Loox lighting solution. They provide room lighting and accentuate the wall surfaces. The Q Four and Q One luminaires withdraw discreetly into the background and create specific light zones with their focussed light emission. These surface-mounted luminaires in a classical white housing impress with their optimised glare suppression. Nimbus Cubic LED luminaires have been deployed in the bathrooms and stairwells of the Jopa Joma. With their monolithic, translucent luminaire bodies, they retreat into the background and, when switched on, generate pure, even light. Nimbus’s Squeeze suspended luminaires hang over the dining tables in the apartments and are real eye-catchers. These LED luminaires were designed by Karim Rashid and have joined the ranks of classic designs to have emerged from the Stuttgart lighting workshop. They are mostly controlled by dimmable lighting solutions from Nimbus and Loox using intuitively operated wall switches.
“The Jopa Joma project shows how Nimbus can contribute to creating holistic room and lighting design together with Häfele and its partners,” says Dietrich F. Brennenstuhl, founder and managing director of Nimbus. “The architects’ ideas were developed and perfectly optimised within the team.”