Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes apartment

In this case, the renovation is carried out in a flat in a building constructed in 1901. A building where the decorative elements of the Modernist period have been maintained.

Floors, walls and ceilings are delicately worked showing the skills of the craftsmen. Exquisite compositions in each of the plans.

The floor is kept as it was originally, which makes the work much easier, as the aim is to enhance the value of all those elements that have deteriorated with the passage of time.

The original 202m² dwelling is to be divided into two independent entities of 90m² and 119m² respectively. Each of the dwellings will have to comply with the minimum requirements established by the regulations according to the number of occupants, while maintaining the elements with heritage value.

Despite the difference in surface area between the two new entities, both accommodate a similar programme: living room, dining room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. However, while one faces the public road, the other opens onto the inner courtyard.

Being the flat facing the inner courtyard the smallest in size, it has the great advantage of having a large terrace which, due to its dimensions, can give rise to a space for communal use that can be distributed in many different ways according to the needs of those who will inhabit the flat. 

Segregating or dividing a flat requires a lot of skill when there are so many elements to be preserved. Some of the rooms have a Nolla mosaic floor and others have a larger hydraulic mosaic floor. Some rooms have decorated ceilings with plaster mouldings and rosettes and others have simpler ceilings. The windows overlooking the central lighting courtyard have a geometric composition and use coloured glass, sometimes even engraved. The doors, however, are made of solid pinewood, decorated with mouldings.

Here and there there are elements that should be preserved, so the renovation should start from this premise and only intervene on those elements without artistic and heritage value.

The new materials introduced with the renovation are not intended to imitate those of the period in which the building was constructed; the aim is not an intervention that imitates what was used in the past. In any case, the new materials should not take centre stage, they should be neutral so that the attention is focused on the original elements that have been preserved.

As usually happens in this type of refurbishment, the difficult thing is to carry out the new electrical, telecommunications, plumbing and sanitation installations without spoiling the simplicity and harmony with which each of the spaces were conceived. What is also difficult is to comply with the new thermal and acoustic requirements without spoiling these spaces. But ingenuity and experience have led us to find the tricks to prevent this from happening. Using skirting boards for the passage of installations, adding mouldings to window frames and adding plaster counter mouldings where the walls meet the ceiling to take up the thickening of the walls when they have been plastered, are just some of them.

This is a job that only those with good training and an appreciation for the profession are capable of doing.

What is praiseworthy about this project is precisely that ability to work in the present with spaces from the past that, without being specifically catalogued, do explain a history that is worth listening to. A history that explains our culture and our art.