Hotel Casa Sagnier

Known as ‘Casa Dolors Vidal de Sagnier’, in honor of his wife, the building was built in 1892 as a family home and studio for the architect Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia, something that was reflected in the current Casa Sagnier boutique hotel, whose rooms recall to a house where rest, work and meetings with friends coexist.

The building is located in Barcelona, ​​on the corner between Rambla Catalunya and Passatge de la Concepció, one of the most iconic enclaves of the Eixample. After many years of use as a housing complex, the building became a hotel in 2008, being restored in 2021 to recover its original character, giving rise to the current Hotel Casa Sagnier, an establishment where discreet luxury is the protagonist.

The architecture and design studio Turull-Sørensen tackles the project commissioned by the Pérez-Sala family to create a distinguished, elegant, quiet hotel that embodies the best of the city’s values ​​and pays tribute to its own Sagnier, with direct nods to his profession and his way of doing things.

The design challenge has focused on interpreting the mixture of times: looking at the past, studying it and understanding all the historical links of the building to its space-time context, as well as the figure of Sagnier himself; staying in the present, designing in the now for a real audience; look to the future and build so that the new hotel can withstand and solvencially pass the years

In the words of the architect Federico Turull, who has directed the reform work: «it was not about imitating what Sagnier would have done 100 years ago, but about facing it with his mentality, that of a creator who dialogues with the different eras he has lived through, The building lives and will live, without pretending to have a rigorous and marked style, but rather moving in the times that touches it.”

Starting from this central attitude, a series of design solutions have been defined to move in an eternal contemporaneity, recreating comfortable environments for a wide public, and a reform has been directed in a generous and open way, allowing different craftsmen and artists, as Sagnier himself would have done.

The tour of this emblematic building can be started in two ways. The first through its main entrance -from Rambla Catalunya- with a «bulged» awning in indigo blue, from where it leads to a first hall with handmade floral murals on both sides; After the first automatic sliding door, a distributor space opens with a mural work, this time in plaster and also with floral motifs. This distributor organizes the Café de l’Arquitecte restaurant at the

left and a cozy library room on the right, where meals are also served and functions as an extension of the restaurant itself. After this distributor, other automatic sliding doors welcome the hotel, in a sheltered reception. The second access opens from the side passage -Passatge de la Concepció-, giving way first to the Cafè de l’Arquitecte restaurant, and from there to the distributor and subsequent access to the reception.

Precisely, on its façade facing the passage, Turull-Sørensen has designed black metal carpentry in a guillotine format, which allows opening in the same vertical plane and generates an indoor-outdoor space, connecting the Cafè de l’Arquitecte restaurant with the Passatge de the Conception.

As Federico Turull himself says, it is a directed choral project: «We were looking for an inclusive, generous space, also from a creative point of view, open to the guided intervention of artisans and artists who add to the project, always under one direction» . An interesting relationship between the profession of the architect and his collaborators, treating the building with a contemporary vision and without false nostalgia.

One of the premises of the project was to create an inclusive space, far from opulence, and that would invite the citizen to enter the restaurant, which is open from breakfast, with an open kitchen for lunch and dinner and a cocktail service; in fact, the two accesses to the hotel itself are made by first passing through the restaurant or distributor, thus leaving the reception space in the background, more private. In this reception, the game of fabrics in different textures in black tones prevails and a counter made to measure by combining different recovered furniture stands out.

Going into details of the Cafè de l’Arquitecte restaurant, it should be noted that it is a space where the sensation of comfort and an elevated homy style prevail. «From the beginning we wanted to convey the sensation of being in a house prepared for a special moment, with the desire for the client to feel like a guest», underlines Federico Turull.

Different environments with differentiated furniture have been generated. In this sense, at the end of the room with the façade facing the passage, we wanted to represent the workspace of an architect, with nods to Enric Sagnier, with his images as an exhibition, but also with more contemporary elements. In the other interior room, more like a library, we find different scenes: from the tables that face the glass façade with views of Rambla Catalunya, a pleasant area in front of the fireplace or a large table and a wooden cupboard at the back.

The textile game has gained special importance, with benches made to measure in mustard and green velvety fabrics, as well as on the ceilings, with PET acoustic absorbers lined with fire-retardant fabric. The enveloping sensation is enriched by the leading presence of wood in much of the furniture.

In the rooms, a two-tone balance of black and white combined with wood predominates. All the types of rooms have in common the sensation of harmony without stridency, they are comfortable, with nuances that emphasize the relationship with the surrounding architecture through windows or galleries -so typical of the Eixample- that connect us with Rambla Catalunya or with the Passatge de la Concepció, all of them representative streets of Barcelona.

Among the 51 rooms we find from small rooms, where textiles are used to generate a unified sensation of space-bed-canopy with curtains that surround the bed itself, to larger rooms, among which are the superior rooms, junior suites and great

suite, all of them with a sober interior design in which the combination of fabrics, wood and warm lighting exudes an elegance that seeks, above all, a decoration that does not succumb to the transience of trends. Some of them also have pleasant terraces with hammocks and showers to enjoy the Mediterranean climate.

To complete all the environments, it has been essential to have the advice of the interior designers Nuria Pérez-Sala and Estrella Salietti, and also, in a final phase, with the styling of the Elefante company -with Eva Balart and Juan Carballido in charge-, to give life to specific points such as shelves or walls, with illustrations, objects, maps or other materials that evoke the work of an architect.