MORERIA STUDIO
“La Morería”, what used to be the outside mudejar suburbs of Madrid, still keeps nowadays part of its sinuous and irregular pattern related to Islamic and medieval urbanism, marked by constant changes in level and perspective. Its buildings, mostly trace their construction one or two centuries ago, although the old city plans reveal that their perimeters are preceded by many more. They all emerge with different but similar languages with a proportion in tune that orders their fronts. Between brick caves and granite, and fabric and wood structure, many of these volumes preserve the elegance and scale of another time construction. Ground floors open to the street has been always deteriorated spaces. Dedicated to businesses or storage suffered an intermittent use during decades what has caused its lack of habitability more related to living or modern working spaces. The walls and partitions reveal the multiple treatments and wounds that have been suffering over time and at the same time speak of obsolete traditions that are worth preserving. Therefore, to reform this space for an intensive and constant use as a studio, its initial conception needs to be modified to turn into a warm and vital space, shelter during the day that takes advantage of the few natural light that arrives from the northwest. The walls will be dyed in white in order to bathe them in the distant light reflections coming from the outside and inside courtyards. The pine wood will cover the accesses, floors and handmade furniture designed and handcrafted by the studio to reach a haptic heat inevitably inherent to the material poetics.
Wood color or how it reacts to light has a thermodynamic implied that doesn’t affect directly or just to the senses but spiritually as well. The material is capable of calming or avoiding a space’s coldness or hostility. It is in everyday life and it make a condition in how we configure the spaces we inhabit. Listen, touch or see the effects that each material emits, requires attention, care and calm. It is always a paused process, a close look generated by mere curiosity and in search for authenticity but not as a unique and reserved vision about what something should be but what actually something really is.
