Costa Rican artist Juli Bolaños-Durman has renovated her Edinburgh apartment using salvaged and upcycled materials, creating a sustainable home that she says "celebrates the beauty in imperfection." The project, called La Casita (meaning "the wee house"), was designed in collaboration with Alexander Mackison of local studio Architecture Office and was long-listed for Dezeen Awards 2025 in the sustainable interior category.
Bolaños-Durman, known for her work in glass and use of waste materials, prioritized sustainability and comfort when developing the design brief for her compact flat. She worked closely with local fabricators to transform reused, reclaimed, and offcut materials into custom architectural elements. "Our main objective at the start of the project was to create a cozy home that also reflects my personal ethos of celebrating the beauty in imperfection," explained Bolaños-Durman. "While I typically work with found glass, designing this flat allowed me to apply a similar approach on a larger scale using a broader range of materials."
The apartment is located on the first floor of a Victorian tenement building in Edinburgh's Leith neighborhood. The flat had not been renovated in decades and was stripped back to bare walls before undergoing comprehensive restoration. Mackison helped design a series of architectural interventions that maximize the available space and transform overlooked or imperfect materials into carefully crafted objects. "The fabric and furniture that form the project are a direct response to the materials at hand, shaped through close collaboration with fabricators and suppliers in a material-first approach," he said.
The kitchen showcases the project's sustainable design philosophy through its use of surplus materials from previous projects. Mackison designed a custom kitchen that was crafted by woodworking specialists Silvan Studio using a combination of oak, cherry, Douglas fir, and ash wood for the cupboard doors, highlighting the tonal and textural variation between different wood species. The internal carcasses are made from Valchromat, a dyed fiberboard material left over from one of Silvan's commercial projects. The colorful interiors contrast with the kitchen's natural wood fronts, providing what Bolaños-Durman described as "a bit of Latin-infused sass."
Throughout the home, existing pine floorboards that had been hidden beneath carpeting were lightly sanded to retain their uneven texture, creating a counterpoint to the oversized, gloss-painted skirting boards. The rooms are mostly painted in muted tones that provide a neutral background for Bolaños-Durman's collection of colorful artworks, including many of her own creations. The decorating used Little Greene's Re:mix paint collection, which reformulates leftover, unwanted paints into an upcycled product with a matte finish.
A vibrant yellow hue chosen for the hallway provides a bold contrast and warm welcome to the flat while evoking the Cortez Amarillo tree that flowers in the artist's hometown. The discovery of an old fireplace in the living room informed the creation of a monolithic mantel made from three stone slabs salvaged from local mason AB Mearns. The stone's raw edges were left exposed to celebrate its natural state, while one of the supporting slabs was rotated to add a contrasting element.
In the bathroom, British-sourced stone supplied as offcuts by Britannicus Stone forms the ledges and backsplash. The different stones create a patchwork of colors and were organized based on the available slab dimensions. Overall, the project embodies an approach to sustainability that promotes resourcefulness, reuse, and an intelligent approach to elevating overlooked and discarded materials.
"La Casita is the result of an open yet intimate dialogue of reuse," Bolaños-Durman concluded. "It reflects a shared spirit, where waste is given a second life and the chance to become beautiful again." The artist grew up in Costa Rica and studied in several countries before moving to Scotland in 2010 to complete a master's degree at Edinburgh College of Art. Her mixed-media works made from repurposed found objects have been widely exhibited, including as part of a presentation of unconventional Christmas installations held at Harewood House in England.
