Klinker Apartment is a vacation home owned by a Catalan-American couple in Barcelona. Damaged by an accidental fire, the renovation of the apartment was the design challenge for the CaSA studio: giving a new interpretation to the existing spaces. The solution? Color!
Klinker Apartment is located in a well-characterized Art Nouveau building in the trendy Born neighborhood, on the top floor. Just a year before the renovation intervention, the apartment had been the victim of a fire. The initial task of the CaSA studio, specialized in home renovation, was therefore to provide an economic project thanks to intelligent intervention on the existing installations and the use of ad hoc materials.
Both clients and architects wanted the historical features to be preserved or saved and highlighted, making the most of high ceilings, decorative elements, floors, windows, and doors. The architects were handed the empty apartment with walls and ceilings blackened by fire, a task that required special care.
Most of the walls had to be scraped down to the brick and the original Art Nouveau style ceilings had to be restored. Due to the limited budget, the challenge for the architects was to take the existing spaces and give them a new meaning, a new interpretation.
The architects have decided to treat the central area of the Klinker Apartment with a color-block, creating a space that organizes and directs the functions organized around it (kitchen, dining room, study). The entire ceiling area above the kitchen has been dropped, concealing the beam and air conditioning ducts.
The three cementine floors differentiate the spaces while giving them a chromatic uniformity. The same earthy tone is used for the wall, the ceiling, the kitchen cabinets, as well as for the study area. The result is a distinctive color-block zone at the center of the apartment. A long kitchen island serves as a dining table, aligned with the windows and the corridor it overlooks.
The bedrooms are simple and minimalistic. In the master bedroom, the strip of color becomes a volume, forming the headboard of the bed that incorporates the lights completely. The bedroom also has a small walk-in closet. The children's room follows the color choice of the master bedroom, with the strip of color also repeated on the wardrobe.
