Studio: built architecture
Architects: Diana Carbonell, Jaime Batlle, Victor Alavedra
Team: Ignacio Arizu, Jennifer Álvarez
All photos by © Eugeni Pons
An historic building, an apartment suspended in time, the architecture that brings it back to life and drags it into a new dimension. A perfect setting, an extraordinary background to life flowing, to poetry turned into reality. This is AB House, located in the Eixample, a district of Barcelona, designed by Ildefons Cerda.
The fulcrum of the project is the central corridor, which extends along the length of the apartment, that is a traditional element of the buildings in the Eixample: it allows you to split the house in well-defined areas, dividing the public and private zones.
Light enters from the main facade of the building and dissolves, illuminating every corner of the living room, dining room and library, the main stage of daily life.
Another crucial area is the suite, where from the entrance outlined you can meet a spiral circulation that unites the four points that form the room: the dressing room, office, bedroom and bathroom.
The simplicity and linearity of the intervention aims to focus on the most historic parts of the building, like the original mosaics and the high ceilings with plaster moldings.
Inside the apartment there is a large central element of furniture, which has all the necessary cabinets and filling spaces and that does not reach the total height of the apartment, allowing the light to spread throughout the room. It divides the spaces, eliminating the importance of the doors and closures, through the discontinuity of the elements and the interruptions creating a succession of spaces.
Flexibility and simplicity are the key words for the reading of the draft of Built Architecture Studio, the perimeter walls are unhinged, free from the burden of dividers, walls, closures. The entire project focuses on the main internal frame, leaving that space around the core free to be played, lived and experienced by the residents, who are the real protagonists of the apartment.
This place is poetry for the eyes, the mind, where everything is so clean and functional that can be as fundamental as invisible, leaving room to life.
Structural engineer: Juan Pablo Rodríguez. AVAC Arquitectes Consultors
Construction company: built architecture
Main workers:
Carpentry: Fernando Poveda
Ironwork: Dani Ramírez + Carles Torras
Illumination: Jordi Calero (Ca2L)
MEP: Joan Velasco + Carles Vivó
Marbles: Jaime Rodón
Mosaics: Augusto Baquedano
Construction works: Catalin Pana
Parquet: Jaume Nadal
Painting: Jairo Sánchez
Glasswork: José Durán
