马德里紧凑型公寓丨西班牙马德里丨Gonzalo del Val + Toni Gelabert

Sink your teeth into the zesty orange and grapefruit tones of this delightfully renovated apartment in the Spanish capital. Designed in collaboration between Gonzalo del Val and Toni Gelabert, this compact seventy-square-metre home is modified to accommodate the client’s change of lifestyle through three interventions, hence its name Tres Piezas (three pieces).

The renovation was spawned from the client’s shift in work and lifestyle routine after spending eleven years abroad. She acquired two tiny apartments — originally designed for short tourist stays — which were to be remodelled into a home for a single resident while still being suitable to accommodate guests in between. Additionally, shifts in attitude towards working from home required the apartment to allow space for this purpose as well. It’s a pretty hard-core brief for such a small space.

The two small apartments were unified into a single volume. The circulation of the floorplate, resembling an elongated handle, determined the final sequence of divvying the space into thirds — one being the living, the kitchen as the central heart and the bedrooms towards the rear.

Inside the white-painted apartment, Gonzalo del Val and Toni Gelabert introduced three parts to signpost a new transition of space. Through the entrance into the apartment is an orange square tiled frame — half of it floats on the threshold between the bedroom and kitchen, while the other half is grounded with the living room. A generous light timber box kitchenette is installed near the entrance door, establishing a welcoming hearth of the home while doubling as a bookcase for the living quarters. A curved wall adjacent to the entrance conceals the bedroom. Looking up, deep red orange floods the ceiling, adding the fluorescent light to give variations of the citrus colour glow while complimenting the salmon pink table centralised below.

The primary bedroom, despite being semi-opened, is protected by an elevated T-shaped ‘totem’ multi-functional device of a closet, shower and vanity located near the apartment’s toilet. Despite its standalone appearance, the intervention contains sliding doors on the bedroom and shower end for privacy. Like the effervescent entry piece in the kitchen heart, the wet and storage area of the main bedroom is tiled in yellow, giving the apartment a gradient of sunrise-sunset charm when looking down the corridor. Contrasting touches of turquoise for the closet door and micro-tiled deep blue are added for the wet area, appropriately reflecting Lavapiés’ colourful facades upon which the apartment is located.

Modest and functional, this fun and compact apartment challenges what it means to have partitions within homes. It goes on to prove that maximising space can sometimes mean simply having the ability to adapt and transform.

[Images courtesy of Gonzalo del Val + Toni Gelabert. Photography by José Hevia.]