Flat renovation in the Chueca neighborhood
by gon
Airbnb, the software platform dedicated to the offer of accommodation to individuals and tourists, due to its temporary nature, offers an opportunity to reflect and explore risky and innovative typological solutions, both in their spatial organization and in their material definition that move away from traditional housing models.
Under this premise, a space is projected consisting of a single rectangular room of 7.47 x 2.80 meters, open to an interior patio facing west, where the vast majority of domestic actions take place; here, you eat, you go to sleep, you read, you receive the guests, you watch the television and you even work. The disposition of the storage / bed in one of the ends of the house facilitates the reconfiguration and transformation of the domestic space in each moment, depending on the hour of the day, the days of the week and the number of users involved.
To this multifunctional room are added two pieces of service: the access, and the kitchen and bathroom. The colors of the three spaces (blue, yellow and gray), in addition to marking the spatial character and defining the program and use of each room are historical symbolic representations of the cave in the case of the entrance to the house, of the fire in the space where the production of food takes place, and of the stone wall in the main room.
Both worlds, that of the pieces of service and that of the multipurpose room, are linked by an old wall built of wooden beams and pillars and filling material that is recovered and rehabilitated to act as a mediator between the three pieces while allowing us to reflect on classical domestic dualities such as public / private, inside / outside or interior/ exterior.
Credits:
Architects: gon- Gonzalo Pardo
Collaborators: Alejandro Sánchez, Carol Linares
Construction: Alejandro Ruíz. Serviteco Obras SL
Carpentry (bed furniture): El Rey de las Camas SL
Kitchen: Cocinas y Granitos Plaza
Location: Calle Pelayo, Madrid, Spain
Client: Private
Date: 2015
Surface: 30,05 m2
Photography: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)
Architects: gon architects
gon is a Madrid-based architecture and design office headed by Gonzalo Pardo since 2014. His practice focuses on research and development of singular architectural projects of different scales ranging from urban planning to buildings to interior construction.
The common denominator of his works is a playful, experimental, critical and optimistic view of the contemporary. In a constant dialogue based on observation and details, his interest focuses on the creative processes of architectural design and construction, as well as the role of mediation and communication of architecture as fundamental vehicles for transforming the world into a place more sustainable, worthy and free.
Gonzalo Pardo is an architect from ETSAM (School of Architecture of Madrid) since 2007, and has a PhD in Architecture since 2016. His thesis “Body and House: Towards the contemporary domestic space from the transformations of the kitchen and bathroom in the West” obtained the outstanding Cum Laude rating, and received for it the 2016-2017 Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award and an honorable mention in the XI call for the Arquia Foundation Thesis Contest.
Since 2007 he teaches as a visiting professor at different universities and institutions, in subjects with the common denominator of being linked to the project, as in the European Institute of Design (IED), in Madrid; the Illiois Institute of Technology (IIT), in Chicago, United States; Lund University, in Sweden, and the Master in Collective Housing (MCH), in Madrid. He has been a professor in the Master in Architectural Communication (MaCA) and in the Master in Advanced Projects (MPAA) of the Department of Architectural Projects at ETSAM.
He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Architectural Projects at ETSAM, where he teaches undergraduate projects. Member of the Hypermedia research group: Communication Workshop and Architectural Configuration, he directs doctoral theses as a teacher and researcher, as well as numerous End of Master’s Projects (TFM) and Final Degree Projects (TFG).
He has been deputy curator of the Spanish pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale, and since 2000 he has obtained 41 national and international awards, including the first prize for the remodeling of the AZCA block in Madrid in 2007; the second prizes in the international Skyscraper contests, in New York, and Velux, in Denmark, in 2007; COAM award in 2014 for the Paréntesis curator cycle, and honorable mention in the Europan 14 competition at the Barcelona location. His projects and built work have been widely disseminated in national and international, physical and virtual media.
