CASA OLIETE is an apartment renovation of a 65m2 house located in the neighborhood of Congrés, Barcelona. The house has a north-south orientation, to the south, the main rooms receive a beautiful light all day, leaving the rest of the house sparsely lit by a small patio that shares with its neighbors, facing north. Formerly it had three rooms, one exterior and two interiors. One of them was between the dining room and kitchen, complicating the communication between them and ventilating trough a exterior secondary space of the kitchen.
The project works in two directions: first, a mild spatial reorganization that improves the conditions for a good life; In such a way, the position of the kitchen is changed with the one of the first room. This move provides windows to all rooms, ensuring a good ventilation of them. In addition the communication between the kitchen and the dining room now is more direct. To continue, it was essential to expand the spatial perception of the house thus removing all the partitions from the lobby to the balcony, creating a continuous space that directs the views in the longest direction of the house.
Finally, most of the furniture is integrated with the architecture of the house. Special care has been taken in the materiality, using birch plywood board in two finishes, white and water-varnished. Learning from the Nordic masters, we believe that the greater abstraction in design works in the direction of being able to integrate these elements perfectly in the life of the inhabitants, so that they are the ones who are able to express themselves.
