Echoing the sentiment from yesterday’s
DESIGN
Located in the affluent expansion district of Madrid, close to Retiro Park (one of the city’s largest and best-loved parks) the home had some stunning original features, but lacked the structure to support a modern family lifestyle. Lucas and Hernández-Gil’s design addresses both these features by reworking the layout to concentrate on the ‘night spaces’ (three bedrooms and three bathrooms) and the ‘day spaces’ (living and dining areas) as distinct wings of the home, without losing the remarkable elements of the initial design, such as the extensive exterior facade and nine balconies – something of a rarity in a type of house that usually skews deeper rather than wider.
The day spaces now are characterised by non-compartmentalised communal room that includes the living, dining and kitchen areas, with subtle cues like the fireplace and wooden stud wall to gently guide the living experience. Meanwhile, the bedrooms sit in a row along to hallway, with bathrooms and walk-in wardrobes accessible across the other side of the corridor.
While the layout may have been significantly restructured, the materials were chosen to connect with the original tones of the house, particularly the recurring use of wood and stone with different cuttings that were inspired by the home’s original materials. Most of the interior walls are white, contrasted with the warm unfinished plank flooring and some copper details. Fixtures and appliances are mostly integrated to the kitchen, while furnishings were kept minimal to bring out the home’s personality in materiality rather than objects. In doing so, the design achieves the best of both worlds – a solid grounding in the century-old heritage of the space without compromising a modern lifestyle.
The home’s original design split the space in half by a long and wide corridor, with rooms boxed in by lots of partitioning walls. Lucas and Hernández-Gil removed these dividing walls and looked for other ways to segment the space, settling on the day and night spaces that inform the new layout of the home.
Striking out from the wood panelling and white walls of the living and bedroom spaces, the bathrooms are lined with grey marble, with the smaller bathroom appearing larger in size thanks to a clever mirror wall set behind the marble basins.
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Elegant essentials and can’t-go-wrong classics – the perfect mix.
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