Money may be a taboo topic for some, but that was not the case with Martí Delclòs when he sought out Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño, the couple behind Takk Architecture. Martí, a content strategist with a background in design, had just purchased an apartment—offered at a price he couldn’t refuse—in Barcelona’s hilly El Coll neighborhood. He had heard the architects lecture as an undergraduate and felt drawn to “their existential attitude, their way of being in the world,” says Martí. “They fit my hope of beating the system and building the ‘ecological class’ French philosopher Bruno Latour defines in Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime.”

When he met Luzárraga and Muiño, he brought his bank statements, disclosed his mortgage payments and monthly paychecks, and detailed his expenses to come up with what he could save per month. “It was super transparent,” says Luzárraga. Martí wanted to explode the constraints of a traditional home to create a space “open to the field of imagination,” as he puts it, while remaining functional and practical—all on a budget of 10,000 euros.

€600 Demolition	€750 Electrical	€700 Plumbing
€300 Cement Floor	€500 Shower Walls & Floor	€3,750 Medium-Density Fiberboard (MDF)
€1,450 CNC Milling	€175 Hardware	€136 Ikea Legs
€1,050 Windows	€75 Kitchen Structure	€850 Bathroom Fixtures & Tub
Grand Total: $10,336

“Normally, when you have ten-thousand euros, the priorities are painting, or renovating the toilet or kitchen,” says Luzárraga. “We had to do an exercise of setting priorities, and we were very radical: What we usually do when we have ten-thousand euros is exactly what we didn’t do.”

The original two-bedroom apartment, which occupies the first floor of a three-story building, had a minuscule kitchen and bathroom. Takk Architecture prioritized relocating the kitchen and tub to the windows for light and ventilation, eschewing cosmetic upgrades such as painting, replastering, or retiling to stay within budget. Circumventing the need for a heating system, which would have added construction time and cost, Luzárraga and Muiño encased the bedroom in MDF and sheep wool insulation. Aside from a corridor encased in MDF linking the entrance to the bedroom, the rest of the 430-square-foot apartment is open-plan.

The choice of MDF and sheep wool as the home’s main materials was an economical one. The wool, stuffed into the framework of the bedroom volume, also makes a visual statement, wrapping the box like a cozy sweater. It underscores the project’s aim to be as energy-efficient as possible. “It makes the ecology more visible,” says Luzárraga, “which is inspiring and makes us more concerned [with conservation].”

To save time and labor costs, Takk Architecture “designed the house as a big piece of furniture,” says Luzárraga. The walls, ceilings, and other components were milled by a CNC machine and delivered to the site, where Luzárraga, Muiño, and Martí assembled everything over the course of three weeks. “This approach granted me a living experience of my own house from the very beginning,” says Martí. “The idea of building the project in the apartment with simple tools prioritized a bodily based process over the result.”

The home’s volumes, raised on Adils furniture legs by Ikea, are at staggered heights—another nod to the DIY ethos. “We did a lot of research and found that the Ikea legs were the easiest to adapt because of their different heights,” says Luzárraga. The lofting allows plumbing to run under the volumes instead of being concealed in the walls, which would have been a long, messy, and expensive process. The Adils legs, by contrast, are $7.50 USD a pop. “Composition-wise, it’s interesting that every time you change space, you change height,” says the designer.

From demolition to the handing over of the keys, construction took two months and was completed in November 2022. The raw, layered home is a perfect fit for Martí, who has some advice for others building on a strict budget. “Criticize normalizing frameworks,” he says. “Put yourself at risk. Disrupt established states…and do so with your actual resources instead of waiting until you can afford it.”

More Budget Breakdown stories:

A New Zealand Architect’s $96K Plan to Become a First-Time Homeowner

A Seattle Family Builds a Rugged Cabin on a Remote Island for $41K

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Takk Architecture / @we_are_takk

Builder/General Contractor: Takk Architecture