Architecture Studio: COMA Arquitectura +Lucía Millet (CiertoEstudio); Photography: Marta Vidal

The project consists in renovating an old guesthouse located in a classic 19thcentury residential building, completely transforming the atmosphere while staying within the normative limitation of not modifying the existing distribution. The change in the type of accommodation to be offered is significant, and therefore the project proposes a new sober and elegant look that interacts with the elements of the building’s original architecture while seeking unexpected visual resources that add a differential value to the clients’ accommodation offer.

The repair of both the carpentry and the hydraulic tiles means the distribution of the original house can be discerned, while the new elements express their superposition. The demands of environmental control required by the new use of the guesthouse involve a solution with a false ceiling which greatly impacts on the space. This technical element becomes the main feature of the intervention, which runs through the different rooms of the guesthouse, folding its edges in response to the original elements it finds along the way: moldings, rosettes, beams, etc. This new component is dyed dark and its open interior holds a series of bronze skylights that provide ambiance to the space, guide the guests, and mark the milestones that will accompany their path (doors, mirrors, sinks...).

The primary spaces of the guesthouse are of course the bedrooms, which will be short-stay, very compact but providing maximum comfort. The integration of the bathroom into the bedroom space is one of the keys to alter the perception of the limited space available. The decision to replace the toilet’s opaque enclosure with a translucent glass enclosure and a simple curtain means the bathroom can be included in the volume of the room without renouncing the privacy and water tightness required by its use. This magnification of the space/room is reinforced by the chromatic continuity of the room’s finishes into the bathroom, and by the new false ceiling that runs through the space.