If you’re one of those people — ourselves included — who have fantasized about living in one of the 2,000 apartments that make up the Barbican housing estate in London, where Brutalism meets Roman ruins meets exquisite landscape design, we have (yet another) treat for you: a look inside the 650 square-foot home of interior architect Oskar Kohnen, located inside the estate’s 1973 Defoe House. The apartment features soaring barrel-vaulted ceilings, concrete floors and walls, an original kitchen, and merely some changes to the styling. “Most of the neighbors tore everything out and then laid wooden floors and made everything modern,” Kohnen told AD Germany earlier this year. “But that’s not the spirit of these apartments at all.” He worked with the vibe of the apartment instead of against it, warming up the floors with a simple layer of sisal carpeting and filling it with period-appropriate furniture, like a Senzafine sofa by Eleonora Peduzzi Riva for Zanotta and a table and chairs by Pascal Morgue for Steiner, both designed the same year the first Barbican building opened (1969). Check out the photos below, and if you live in the Barbican yourself, don’t forget to invite us over for tea the next time we’re in London.

PHOTOS BY OSKAR PROCTOR