The office is located in a beautiful Modernistic building in the center of Barcelona. On the door you can read 1871. It is characterized by its proximity to the Ramblas and the Plaza Real. While it stands on a site of medieval origin, the building is a characteristic sample of end-of-nineteenth-century architecture and reproduces a typology which has long been used in the old city of Barcelona: with direct access a principal floor, corresponding to a Venetian “piano nobile” though a staircase and a grand hall housing the stairs leading to the rest of the house. The entry hall is very opened thanks to the strength of a beautiful mixed structure of iron and wood and gives access to multileveled ground floors resembling a theatrical space.
The intervention cannot in any case be defined as a simple restoration, nor as a process of destruction of the existing reality. Probably the transit between the pre-existing domestic space and the new uses proposed is pointed out by a process of interpretation of the original built-up reality.
The structural walls are conserved not only in their strict load-bearing condition but also as organizational mechanisms of the new spatial structure, while some of the transversal diaphragms are demolished to obtain more open spaces and deeper perspectives remains and fragments mark and point out their previous existence. Thus, the coffered ceilings, floorings and decorations are conserved as a testimony to the altered and manipulated reality.
Through this interpretative process it is not at all difficult to functionally localize the various spaces, in a process giving fundamental importance to versatility and flexibility of use. Meanwhile, a few singular pieces of furniture designed by the architects themselves live next to other recovered ones, to contribute in an important degree to the characterization of the interior space.
Ceilings, cornices and hydraulic mosaic pavements operate as evidence to identify the primitive spatial structure
