This 100 square meter (1,076.4 square feet) apartment in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Israel is located in a historic building overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It is difficult to determine the building’s exact age, although the authors of the project,  Pitsou Kedem Architects, speculate that it is hundreds of years old. Over time, it has gone through many changes and had many additions made that have damaged the original quality of the building and its spaces. The effort was to remove all the extraneous elements and expose the original state of this remarkable piece of historic architecture. Minimalist furniture in neutral tones made of natural materials completes the design. Here is how the architects reflect on the project:

The central idea was to combine the old and the new whilst maintaining the qualities of each and to create new spaces that blend the styles together even intensify them because of the contrast and tension between the different periods. The historical is expressed by preserving the textures and materials of the buildings outer shell and by respecting the building engineering accord. The modern is expressed by the opening of spaces and by altering the internal flow to one more open and free and the creation of an urban loft environment along with the use of stainless steel, iron and Korean in the various partitions, in the openings and in the furniture.

What can be a better case for minimalist aesthetic than seeing it manifest itself so organically in a centuries-old setting. At some point the line fades, and the two styles connect - timely and timeless, old and new, two faces of simplicity, stretched through the ages.