Bondietti House

A project that makes the most of a 45 square meters apartment, demolishing partitions, looking for natural light and enhancing the old Catalan curved ceiling.

Joan Casals Pañella, Bondietti House, El Poble-sec, Barcelona, Spain
In a forty-five square meters flat located in the third floor of a building placed in Poble Sec’s district, was suggested the necessity to update the building’s programme in accordance with the nowadays’ renting needs.
With the idea of making the best possible use of natural light and with the willpower of dignifying and reinforcing some elements from the old living space first Joan Casals Pañella knocked down all the partition walls that in perpendicular position were not helping to distribute the light. A new oak’s wooden floor, fixed on DM panels and pine’s strip tighten floor existent beams, allows to confront the Catalan curved ceiling made of plane bricks. The recuperated wooden beams allows to start a kind of horizontal container where afterwards, it could appear a new possible distribution in the space.
Joan Casals Pañella, Bondietti House, El Poble-sec, Barcelona, Spain
Joan Casals Pañella, Bondietti House, El Poble-sec, Barcelona, Spain

In white, around the three only partition walls that where kept from the old building, have been arranged the new building’s programme. The first partition wall, that separated the bedroom from the living room, has been doubled to reinforce and to avoid the possible bendings in the central part of the flat. The second one, that separated the dining room with the kitchen, has been drilled by light underpinnings made of steel, overlapping transversely the group of closed programmes.  In the third one, that finally separated the kitchen from the bathroom, reducing the height, allowed a kind and useful circulation in the flat, distinguishing the public areas from the private ones.

The uncoated bricks from the dividing wall have been reappeared to close and delimit vertically the content, sometimes emphasizing some possible overlapping programmes interpretations, sometimes contributing to give more profundity to the narrowest rooms. The hydraulic mosaics pavement found in the apartment where also relocated to point the new wet zones such as the kitchen, the dining room and the bathroom. In this way, the old wooden doors were restored with some remnants of wood founded and they’ve generated new ways of opening and closing spaces.


Bondietti House, El Poble-sec, Barcelona, Spain
Program: apartment
Architects: Joan Casals Pañella
Cost: 550€/sqm
Area: 45 sqm
Completion: 2015

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