Carrer Avinyó
Refurbishment of a piano nobile apartment
on Carrer Avinyó in the Gothic Quarter of
Barcelona. The apartment is situated at a major
crossroads in the city. Like the Flatiron
Building in New York, where Broadway meets the
city’s orthogonal grid, the triangular plan of
the apartment’s interior registers a similar
moment in Barcelona’s historic quarter; Plaça
George Orwell. Our first intervention is to
strip back the internal partitions to reveal
the junction and so reconnect living in the
apartment to the streets beyond.
The apartment will be the holiday home of two
brothers who grew up in Barcelona but now live
in London and Hong Kong. New bedrooms are
created inside large pieces of furniture that
have the appearance of small buildings – the
city beyond the apartment walls is mirrored
by a diminutive city within. The high level
library becomes balconies that connect each
bedroom to their en-suite bathrooms. Beneath
a balcony a glazed lobby provides a threshold
between the apartment and the city.
The new mosaic floor of the apartment is
decorated with a triangular pattern that
matches the geometry of the plan. The tile
pattern is graded in colour from green at one
end of the apartment to red at the other to
differentiate the brothers’ private spaces.
The tiles were being made by Mosaics Martí who
supplied the product for Gaudi’s projects in
the city. A large, specially designed dining
table stands at the street corner where the red
and green are most mixed and will become the
meeting place for family and friends.
