The home of the cabinetmaker
The house we modified had only two tenants since it was built 100 years ago. The last of them was a well-known cabinetmaker that would not stop filling the place with cabinets, some of them huge and intrusive, piling up relentlessly over time until time forgot about them.
The property is deceivingly deep. The classic ensache hallway goes for over 25 meters of low-light areas and lighter ones. Perspective in its purest form. A dark center in the middle of the visual journey. Pile up these features in the right order and you end up with an amplified sense of depth.
How could we bring together this stretch of space and time?
We blew out the hallway thus vanishing... the vanishing point. Instead of building up with volumes of cabinets, we built up layers upon layers of light and rooms. And instead of “huge and intrusive”, we added three big wood furniture structures to honor the cabinetmaker.
These volumes are reminiscent of something from the Far East, bringing day-to- day life to a pause. Multifunctional cabinets that float through layers and areas. An interstice that barely touches the floor, ceiling or walls as a way to show respect and keep the essence of an ensanche flat: The old fashioned tile floors, the frames in the ceiling, the original woodwork.
