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Turning a serviced apartment into a home
Personal touches can turn that austere apartment into a comfortable albeit temporary home. PHOTO/unsplash.com.
What you need to know:
- Some people are either not bothered by the ambience in serviced apartments or learn to live with it but not Eva Mynsberghe.
Serviced apartments are becoming more and more popular for people who want a nice place to stay that is a hybrid of a hotel and a home.
They offer the best of both worlds because while they are cheaper than hotels they still offer the benefits of hotels. Serviced apartments usually consist of a separate bedroom, bathroom, living space and kitchen and as such, they offer even more value for money, especially over the long-term.
But most importantly, if you want to stay for a longer period, then you can negotiate rates more easily negotiated than those in hotels.
Just as the majority of serviced apartments, Eva Mynsberghe’s comes complete with a kitchen and a comfortable living area, making it very suitable for working. So she easily meets clients and associates in the comfort of her own home and has a comfortable desk and chair from which to work.hey might be.
Customise
However, all these benefits cannot overshadow the austerity with which these places are furnished. Because they are meant to have mass appeal, they end up looking impersonal and cold. Some people are either not bothered by the ambience or learn to live with it but not Mynsberghe. Mynsberghe believes nothing is cast in stone, especially her apartment’s décor.
“If I woke up in a mood to move a plant from one corner of the room to another or interchange a rustic wall hanging for another, I would do so because I believe one’s home should be as dynamic as their preferences,” says Mynsberghe who now goes by the alias Balungi.
She has filled the apartment with her favourite décor items including succulent plants, backcloth wall hangings, unique floor rugs and customised furniture. With simple décor touches Balungi has imprinted her personality on her stylish, towering Bukoto Heights apartments. Balungi says she was able to transform the apartment drawing inspiration from her childhood because she was raised in a similar environment.
“It is hard to separate work from home when you are a designer. I wake up and start working and can go on, sometimes up to midnight. In between, I will rest. You cannot do that when you have to go to an office and sometimes struggle to get into working mode,” she explains, adding that her work is about and involves people management.
Because she uses the apartment as an office for her architectural and interior décor business, she constantly changes the decor to showcase her work to potential clients.
Balungi says she was able to transform the apartment drawing inspiration from her childhood. PHOTO/Edgar R. Batte.
Mynsberghe teamed up with her mother to set up Balungi Uganda, a company which offers design services, handmade custom pieces and local materials, including bark cloth, banana fibre, recycled paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, paper mash, wood, recycled glass beads, cow horn, bones and shells; all natural and locally available.
Inspiration
The abundant goodness of Uganda was the inspiration for their business name Balungi translated as they are good people in the Luganda dialect. She observes that Ugandan culture is endowed with so many beautiful items that it surprises her when people go the extra mile to import décor items from beyond borders and the continent.
As she pours me a cup of coffee, Balungi, the mother of one, tells me that she was born in an environment filled with beauty; her mother an interior architect and her grandmother, a florist. From a tender age, she followed her mother to almost every working site she visited. She has made flower arrangements since she could speak. It was, therefore, no surprise that she later on studied industrial design and graphic design; academic courses that amplified her creativity. One of her study and working observations was that designing does not have borders.
“To make a space nice, you need to combine skills that are technically all based on the same principles in art and design,” she says. She adds that space management in a home is the first step of each interior design process.
“How does my client want to live in his home, what are their habits, their do’s and don’ts. Understanding the energy of sunlight, air circulation, orientation, colours, materials, acoustic, all very important subjects to make a well-functioning space/home. Interior design starts with how we want to live in a given space,” she says.
Balungi has so far worked with some of Kampala’s and out-of-town hospitality facilities such as lodges, hotels, country clubs, restaurants, therein as well as private homes and shops.
Her joy comes from using her skill set to creatively repurpose and renew living and working spaces using old and new things. At heart, she is a conservationist whose objective is to have a low carbon footprint on the environment so, she is intentional on using natural materials such as bark cloth and constantly looks out for new textiles she can infuse in her work.
She adds, “Bark cloth is indeed one of the easiest materials to work with. I have used it for more than 10 years. It is easy to improve and is functional. What is more, it is long lasting. It does not get dirty or easily destroyed. It is not just a piece of art, it is functional,” she says. This can be seen in how it is liberally used in her own home.
The architectural designer adds, “I value honesty over perfection or covering up mistakes. I question everything, take life seriously but I don’t take myself too seriously. I would definitely want to make a change with Balungi, the next generation has her biggest support.”
