The bungalow’s renovation hinged on restraint. “The biggest challenge was modernizing the space while still staying true to the historic 1940s charm,” Yuri explains. Rather than dramatically altering its modest footprint, he preserved its scale and proportions, keeping both the pitched ceilings and elongated front porch intact. The intervention’s main focus was clarity, as Yuri notes:  “We decided to let the walls be a blank white canvas and allow for some special pops of colour and texture to come through the décor.”

Those pops confidently surface in the living room, where a vintage “Marenco” sofa by Mario Marenco for Arflex, reupholstered in burnt orange velvet, establishes the spatial and visual centre of gravity. “1970s Italian design was a big source of inspiration,” Yuri says, most notably expressed through a series of tubular chrome forms such as console supports and planters that lend a subtle glamour throughout the house. Marble and rough stone accents introduce tactile counterpoints, while mid-century pieces, including lighting by Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray and Isamu Noguchi, connect the scheme to the home’s postwar roots.

Perhaps the most irreverent moment arises in the bathroom, which balances industrial cool with tactile warmth. Here, a cylindrical chrome washbasin is fitted with a custom latex skirt and paired with a vintage Art Deco shaving mirror and raw granite shelves. A chainmail-like shower curtain, dark pebble flooring and a tall cactus in a chrome planter heighten the room’s subtle playfulness, while original glass blocks, retained from an earlier iteration, filter daylight across white tile surfaces, casting a diffused glow.

Taken altogether, the house reads as an exercise in calibrated contrast: heritage and modernity, restraint and flair, European design heritage and Californian ease. In Yuri’s hands, the modest bungalow becomes less a showcase than a lived-in composition, a space where disparate influences settle into a quietly confident whole.