Reform apartment in the eixample, Provença 371

The project presents the renovation of an apartment located in a building dating form 1930 in the ‘Eixample’, Barcelona. At first, the apartment presented a decayed and dark image due to the excessive subdivided rooms, with different layers of materials and installations that had overlaid over the years and had blurred the original architecture.

DEFOLIATION
The main action taken was a selective ‘defoliation’ of all the layers to reach the traditional building elements as: pavements, ceramic vaulted ceilings, metallic beams and original wood joinery.

TRADITION AND CONTEMPORARY
The intervention seeks to emphasize the path of time, redrawing the traditional architecture of the Eixample. It aims to take the maximum profit of what we found, trying to repair the highest number of pieces. To improve natural light and give homogeneity to the project we painted the whole apartment in white enhancing the tiled floor and its colours. The new materials included, though clearly contemporary, discuss harmoniously with the old, resulting in its totality a unity and timeless image.

THE TABLE AS ARCHITECTURE
We simplified the distribution to obtain larger and brighter spaces. The most important part is the dining room, the heart of the apartment where there is a table of 3.10 meters long and a bench of 5.20 meters along the wall, which functions as seating, shelf, storage space, etc. This unique table in the apartment located between the living room, master bedroom and kitchen gathers all the activities of the apartment, acting as a study table, dining table, place connected with certain tasks in the kitchen, etc.

SCATTERING THE LIMIT
We designed interior boundaries to create different spaces with large openings placed to diffuse the sense of confinement. Based on a sliding door system, we can transform the space to provide the necessary privacy, greater intimacy or, expand the space. The doors, which slide visible, create a dynamic composition of the limits.

Surface: 70 m2

Materials: the furniture is made of birch plywood of 2 cm thick. We designed them and a local carpenter made them. The only furniture we bought are the “Belloch” chairs from Santa&Cole. The doors are also made of birch plywood 2 cm; we bought big boards of Wood, cut them to our measurement and attach them to a sliding system Klein.

Juanjo y Magda

Forma
Collaborator: Clara Ocaña