00:02The design concept of this house was to make the maximum with the minimum.
00:11We named this apartment Casa Flix because Flix is another word for film.
00:17And as the owner works in the film industry we wanted to make this connection.
00:23Also the design of the apartment we think that this kind of full symmetry with the
00:29mirror and with the roofs and the colors also.
00:32Could look like a film of Wes Anderson.
00:36I'm Gonzalo Pardo, the creative director of Ocon Architects, an architectural office based
00:41in Madrid.
00:51This apartment is located in Callao, in the city center of Madrid.
00:58This neighborhood is very special because it's in the heart of the city.
01:04Here in this area happens everything in Madrid.
01:07We are very close to La Gran Vía, which is one of the most important streets in the city
01:12and it's full of life.
01:17This building was built in 1900.
01:24So the special thing of this apartment is located in the top part of the building, it's the
01:30fifth floor and it is an attic.
01:36All the colors are also part of the design and they are introduced in order to make different
01:43kind of ambience and spaces inside such a small space.
01:50It's interesting to assign a color to a special function of the house.
01:57The owner of this house is Roberto.
02:02He works in the streaming platform and he wanted to make a renovation after living here a couple
02:08of years.
02:13First time we came to this apartment it was very dark and there was not a lot of light.
02:20Everything was in the wrong place.
02:22It was a very small kitchen in the entrance, the bedroom was shared with the living room,
02:28so the thing we did was to reorganize all the floor plan in terms of logic.
02:34The main changes we did was to separate the house into two parts, a private one and a public
02:40one.
02:40The tallest part of the house contains the bedroom and a shower and the public one contains
02:47all the living room, with the dining room, with the kitchen.
02:51We introduced a place for studying in the new layout.
02:58Before entering the apartment there is a long terrace overlooking the patio.
03:02It's a nice cozy spot for a morning coffee or evening drink.
03:07The front door is a timber frame glass door which helps to let some light through even when
03:13the door is closed.
03:15When inside the glass can be closed off from the inside using a smaller door.
03:21We decided to paint the ceiling partially in blue because we wanted to make the wow effect
03:26when you enter the house.
03:28I think that you make more singular this entrance by painting it in blue.
03:35And also we introduced a circular window in the façade.
03:38You can open it up in order to introduce ventilation inside the house.
03:45As the entrance is so small, we decided to introduce a light metal book shelf in order to make
03:53it floating into the space and in that way Roberto could store it all his book collection.
04:04The entrance is also the home office for Roberto.
04:07It contains a triangular table in order to create a smooth movement when you go inside the house.
04:14We integrated power sockets for laptops and integrated a light on the partition.
04:20Another reason why we located the working table in that place is because above it was the skylight.
04:28We were able to introduce natural light as well as ventilation into the working area.
04:35The living room which is shared with the kitchen and the dining is placed in the heart of the house.
04:40It contains a sofa and a small table.
04:43As we wanted to introduce more natural light into the living area, we added a new skylight
04:49above the dining table.
04:52Around the centre of the living room there is a dormer window and it's a perfect set up
04:57just to put a plant, a chair and spend hours and hours reading, especially during the summer
05:04evenings that you can open up the window.
05:06So, in order to take advantage of the lower parts of the house, we decided to introduce
05:12a deep storage.
05:14For us, the storage in a house is essential.
05:17If a storage works, the house will work.
05:23We designed such a big kitchen because Roberto, the owner, loves to cook.
05:28It's a fine 4.5 metres long kitchen.
05:31Everything is hidden and it contains an integrated fridge, full size oven, induction cock top,
05:38hidden washing machine.
05:40The cabinets are from Ikea and the fronts are laminate play wood from Cubro.
05:48The countertop is made of centered stone.
05:52We used the same material for the splash back of the kitchen.
05:58We chose yellow because as this is the darkest part of the house, we wanted to introduce more
06:03light so we thought that a lighter colour could light all the space.
06:10The house contains two types of light, one of them is LED stripes and the other one wall lamps
06:18that allows to generate some kind of cosy lighting.
06:25We decided to introduce large-scale tiles, one per one metre long, because when you introduce
06:34large tiles into small spaces, the space will look bigger.
06:43The toilet is hidden behind a mirror wall by the entrance.
06:52The mirror wall allows the light to bounce around the darker entrance as well as creating
06:57an illusion of a bigger space.
07:02Inside the bedroom there's a sliding pocket door in order to generate some kind of privacy
07:08once you are inside.
07:11At the end of the bedroom there's a little storage.
07:15I have to say that the bedroom is one of the most special spaces in the house because
07:20it contains three skylights.
07:27At the beginning there were two skylights, but I convinced Roberto to introduce a new one
07:33in order to see the Suez Capitol building.
07:37You can see when you are taking a shower.
07:40The shower area is inside the bedroom.
07:44It's also linked to the rest of the house through glass bricks that allows light to go inside.
07:51During the evening it turns into a lantern.
07:55It generates like a very soft and smooth light for the whole house.
08:00The shower area contains one same tile with two different finishes, one brilliant and the
08:06other opaque, and we wanted to mix them in order to create a vibrant space.
08:12We introduced a mirror and it's interesting because it duplicates the space of the shower.
08:21In our projects we use a lot of mirrors.
08:25Using mirrors is the best strategy to make the space bigger.
08:30So we decided to introduce mirrors in the corners of the house.
08:39It's important to reusing the historical houses in the city centres, but it's also important
08:47to make them livable and to design them with natural light, with natural ventilation and
08:53with materials that you know that are going to last for a long, long time.
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