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Project Details:

Location: Madrid, Spain

Architect: Gon Architects / @gonarchitects

Footprint: 1,162 square feet

Builder: REDO Construcción y Arquitectura

Photographer: Imagen Subliminal / @imagensubliminal

From the Architect: “The story of Casa EME begins with a memory and a desire. A memory belonging to Manuel, its owner—an enthusiast of design and cooking—when he first entered the apartment, before purchasing it, during one of many visits to flats in central Madrid. He had the feeling of having already lived in a similar place, at least with the same spirit, but in another time. And a desire: to imagine himself reading in that house on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, sitting on the sofa as light pours in through the five large windows of the living room, framing the views of Madrid.

“Located in a corner building in the Madrid de los Austrias, Casa EME acts as a watchtower inserted into a dense and compact urban fabric of Baroque origin, surrounded by the hustle and bustle and tourism characteristic of contemporary historic centers. With a floor plan whose geometry recalls the shape of a bow tie, the original apartment, fully oriented toward the exterior, lacked a clear spatial logic. It was composed of five rooms of varying sizes, six balconies, and two street-facing windows, unified by an impressive continuous floor of solid tropical ipe wood in multiple tones. Like a large carpet, the flooring covered the entire apartment, with only exception of the bathroom, which was finished in ceramic.

“The new proposal is based on a strict and deliberate premise: to preserve the existing wooden floor in its entirety, not only as a covering, but as a material memory that anchors the project to place and time. This decision conditions an intervention whose main virtue lies in working with what already exists, while reestablishing the topological and programmatic relationships of the apartment to suit Manuel’s way of living.

“The existing floor was left untouched. Upon this same wood, the new home unfolds, maintaining the system of rooms from the previous configuration. Like a game of sliding pieces, the program shifts across the plan until it reaches a new order, a clearer, more efficient, and more suggestive way of reading the domestic space.

“Among the most significant reprogramming operations, the bedroom is now directly linked to the bathroom, whose interior evokes an outdoor landscape through the use of greens in varying tones. This connection is articulated by a closed, cloud-green pass-through volume that promotes flexibility of use and integrates clothing storage. Both spaces are now connected through the footprint of the former bathroom, materialized as a ceramic trace that is deliberately exposed, emphasizing time and the memory embedded in the house. The kitchen now occupies the heart of the home, a social space that becomes the center and meeting point when friends gather to taste Manuel’s specialty: beef ragu lasagna. The entrance, the most fragile and narrow point of the apartment, is redefined by lowering the ceiling and marking it in yellow. Finally, one of the doors that previously connected to the living room has been removed, transforming that space into an unnamed, flexible room of multiple uses, equally suited for studying or accommodating guests without disrupting Manuel’s daily rhythm.”

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