Barcelona-based architects Jonathan Kahane and Maria Alarcón have recently reinterpreted the spatial conception of a typical apartment from the beginning of the last century in the city’s Gracia neighborhood. The design team was commissioned to refurbish this space full of interior rooms, doors and halls, which does not adapt to the current needs of a living space.
The strategy of the project is based on recovering and revaluing the original elements of the apartment, contrasting them with a minimalistic intervention. Elements like the original hydraulic floor tiles and high ceilings with the Catalan vault are exposed and given an important visual role.
The project allows unifying the space around a single piece of furniture that articulates the two main rooms of the house: a living-dining-kitchen and a bedroom-study. The annexation of these two spaces allows good cross ventilation on the east-west axis. This unique piece allows us to respond to multiple problems and define a new way of seeing, using and living the space.
The furniture is adjusted to the different needs of the program and activates the adjacent spaces, providing it with different uses, simultaneously accommodating storage spaces, kitchen, dressing room and bookcase.
The materiality chosen – oak wood – contrasts with the original elements and marks the intervention. Concentrating the intervention in a single volume on the interior of the floor plan, allows to completely free the perimeter and create a large, open space, flexible and suitable for the current needs of a living space.
