Architect：gon architects

Location：Madrid, Spain; | ;

Project Year：2021

Category：Apartments

Since 1993 when Manuel, a journalist who loves rock music and opera almost as much as he loves social networks like Instagram, bought and moved into a 30-square-meter attic in Madrid's Lavapiés neighborhood, the configuration of the space had not been modified. Under a sloping roof of exposed wooden beams without any kind of insulation that made the attic a somewhat gloomy and unsustainable place, the house included two load-bearing walls that segregated it into three rooms (living-kitchen-dining room, bathroom, bedroom) and a semi-hidden and underused terrace.

When we arrived, we were truly clear about the actions to transform this space into a new one. They can be summed up in three words: demolish, perforate and furnish. The load-bearing wall between the bedroom/terrace and the living/kitchen/dining room is removed to generate unity; new perforations are made in the roof to introduce as much natural light as possible, and the perimeter of the house is equipped with a new floor-to-ceiling storage system, covered with mirrors which make it disappear. Three operations as clear as they are precise, with minimum energy and maximum results.

The answer is a bright, carefree and comfortable house, adjectives intrinsic to a beach house. The materialsused are few but very well chosen: ceramic, paint and mirror.

The final image of the attic is a large qualified room, spatial, luminous, thermally efficient and with an atmosphere that can be modified, turning the room into a scenography that opens and closes according to the mood, as the curtain of a theater opens and closes; a unitary and continuous environment, yet changeable if desired, where the passage from one room to another occurs in a fluid way, with the reference of the different (and few) pieces of furniture that make it up (a table, three chairs, a lamp, an armchair and a bed), and where the common denominator is the floor: a Klein blue polyurethane paint that runs throughout the house, as if it were a marine carpet , helping to blur the boundaries between interior/exterior, public/private, open/closed.

The actions of rest and relaxation take place, metaphorically speaking, in a cave: a threshold lacquered in charcoal gray from which, in a horizontal position, you can look at the sky of Madrid both day and night, and where, in the background, there are three LED strips of different lengths that are a tribute to the American artist Dan Flavin.

The terrace, which is connected to the interior through a ceramic wall turned 45 degrees, becomes another room that introduces light and ventilation in which there is a bench of the same material that invites you to lie down to take a nap on summer afternoons, eat with friends or just sit and read.

Beach House is a vacation house in the center of a city without sea for a person who lives alonea space that is especially enjoyable in solitude, something that, as in the song about time and silence by the Cape Verdean singer Cesárea Évora, is a new beginning.

Built work

Credits

Location: Madrid, Spain

Year: 2021

Built area: 30m2

Client: private

Architecture: gon (Gonzalo Pardo)

Team: Carol Pierina Linares, María Cecilia Cordero, Cristina Ramirez, Iván Rando, Kostís Toulgaridis

Construction: REDO Construcción

Carpentry: Cortizo, Velux (roof windows)

Wood Carpentry: Muebles D’vinci s.l.

Curtains: Rabadán s.a.

Lighting: Oliva iluminación

Photography: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)

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