Spanish studio 2260mm Architects designed the interior for a family, partially dismantling an old house in the neighbourhood of Gracia. The architects inserted an extra storey and added a tiled courtyard filled with potted plants to bring more light into the ground floor.
Most of the decorative tiles were retained and surrounded by new, grey tiles, forming the floors of two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room and the hallways.
“The tiles are from the early twentieth century and were often used in houses and apartments in Barcelona,” architect Manel Casellas told Dezeen.
“Most of the tiles in the corridor and the bedrooms are located in the original place. In the living room and the kitchen we designed ‘carpets’ with some existing coloured tiles,” he added, explaining the arrangement.
Part of the roof had to be removed to add the new first floor, providing a bedroom and indoor balcony with wooden floorboards.
Wooden ceiling beams are left exposed on both floors, but are painted white on the first floor.
Although it was dark, its facades face to the street and the inner garden. The project partially disassemble the house and maintains structure and distribution: a new interior courtyard illuminates the ground floor and gives the kitchen some facade.
We have used a dry construction system, with a new floor of wooden beams, OSB boards, wood fibre insulation and wooden floor. The new facade is isolated from the outside with wood fibreboard. We maintained pre-existing characteristics: interior woodwork and old tiles.
The entire contents of this shop and cafe in Vienna can be hidden away behind a grid of white ceramic tiles.
Designed by Lukas Galehr of architecture collective MadameMohr, the Super Mari’ shop combines an Italian food store with a coffee shop and late-night bar, so its contents change depending on the time of day.
“The client asked for a space which was flexible and able to transform from a simple bar to a mini-market without much effort,” the architect told Dezeen.
Products ranging from pasta to washing powder are displayed within recesses in the tiled white walls, but can be screened behind panels that fold or slide across in front. These panels are also covered with tiles, disguising the locations of the display areas.
“In the closing hours most often the entire interior is closed so that only the tiles are visible, which gives the impression of an emptied-out swimming pool or a butcher’s shop,” said Galehr.
Paper shopping bags are patterned with the same grid and even the cover for the coffee machine looks like a tile-clad block.
Black tiles cover the floor, contrasting with the white walls, while monochrome pendant lights hang down from the high ceiling.
Super Mari’ is a very small Italian Café-Bar-Market in the heart of Vienna’s second district, designed by the young architects collaborative MadameMohr.
The client asked for a space which was flexible being able to transform for instance from a simple bar to a mini-market without much effort. A second request was that there should not be any fancy designer furniture nor any modern patterns or materials which would give the impression of something new and stylish.
The result is a space completely covered in black and white 10x10cm glazed tiles. All furniture are built in closets with intricate swivel mechanisms that allow the owner to change the line of goods in just seconds. All the appliances and bar utensils hide behind rotary-slide doors which are also covered with tiles on the outside.
In the early hours of the day when people are on their way to work they drop by just for a quick coffee and a Cornetto and a spremuta, while in the afternoon the range of goods expands from coffee beans to pasta and even washing powder. Most products are imported from Italy such as passalacqua coffee and pasta from vero lucano. In the late afternoon and evening the space transforms again to the bar where people have a quick aperitivo before they head to one of the numerous nearby restaurants. Many come back after dinner since the true espresso only tastes right at the bar.
In the closing hours most often the entire interior is closed so only the tiles are visible which gives the impression of an emptied out swimming pool or a butcher’s shop. Only insiders and regulars are not irritated by the always changing configurations of the shelves.
Location: Vienna, Austria Client: Maria Fuchs Space: 33m²
Original floor tiles were relocated to highlight seating areas during designer Laura Bonell Mas’ renovation of this Barcelona apartment (+ interview).
Local designer Laura Bonell Mas completely refurbished the 100-square-metre apartment, located among the grid of buildings in the city’s Eixample district.
She uncovered patterned tiles beneath newer ceramics and reused them throughout the property as they were in good condition.
“All the hydraulic tiles in the apartment were there from the beginning,” Bonell Mas told Dezeen. “Most of them had been covered by a brown ceramic flooring for years, which probably explains why they were in a relatively good state.”
Some of the tiles were kept in their original location, while others were relaid in other spaces to denote seating areas at angles to the walls.
“We put back the tiles in the living room and dining room as they were before, and then we used the ones that had originally been in the corridor and entrance of the apartment for the carpets and paths,” said the designer.
Wooden boards frame the tiled areas and cover the remainder of the floor, except for large black tiles used in the kitchen and bathroom. Ceiling mouldings on the suspended ceilings were also restored where possible, along with the balcony doors.
The rooms by the entrance were reorganised and partition walls removed to make the flat more open-plan. A walk-in cupboard was installed between the bedroom and hall to keep clutter hidden away.
As the front door and hallway are positioned at an angle to the rest of the apartment, a curved shelving unit and desk were installed to remedy the awkward junctions.
After noticing a few apartments in the Catalan capital that feature decorative tiles, we published a slideshow and roundup of our favourites. “Lately their popularity has gone up and when doing a renovation, finding beautiful pieces in a good state is almost like finding little jewels,” Bonell Mas said.
Here’s our short interview with the designer about the history of tiles in Barcelona:
Dan Howarth: Did you move tiles from elsewhere in the apartment, or were they bought new to match the existing?
Laura Bonell Mas: All the hydraulic tiles in the apartment were there from the beginning, we didn’t have to buy any new ones.
Most of them had been covered by a brown ceramic flooring for years, which probably explains why they were in a relatively good state.
Nevertheless, we had to take them all out in order to reinforce the floor with a thin layer of concrete, as it is an old building, and the floors had some problems – some unlevelled parts and sound isolation in general.
So we put back the tiles in the living room and dining room as they were before, and then we used the ones that had originally been in the corridor and entrance of the apartment for the carpets and paths. In the rest of the rooms, the tiles were not very beautiful – maybe they had already been changed before.
Dan Howarth: Why were patterned tiles used in Barcelona apartments historically?
Laura Bonell Mas: Initially, these tiles were created as an alternative to natural stone for floorings. The fact that they didn’t have to be baked like ceramic tiling probably had an impact in their development.
Despite the fact that they were used in other Mediterranean areas, the hydraulic tiles seems to be found more often in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, and that is probably due to the art nouveau movement of Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner, Puig i Cadafalch, etc. In their search for a new architecture, decoration played an important part and hydraulic tiling was very versatile in terms of geometries and colours.
Their use went far beyond the age of modernism though, probably because the industry was already quite advanced by then. It has to be said that the more colours a piece has, the more expensive it is because it takes more time to do it. For instance, you can see that the flooring in the living room and the dining room is more noble or was at least more expensive than the ones in the corridor, which only have three colours and its geometry is far more simple.
Dan Howarth: Why are they still implemented today?
Laura Bonell Mas: Around the 1960s their implementation decreased and most of the factories that produced the pieces do not exist anymore.
But lately their popularity has gone up and when doing a renovation, finding beautiful pieces in a good state is almost like finding little jewels. New ones can also be used, even though they are quite expensive, but they don’t look exactly the same. They don’t look aged and the colours are much brighter. Also, because the colour has a four to five millimetre thickness, unlike painted ceramics, you can polish and lower them a little so that they have an even surface.
Dan Howarth: How do the tiles affect the atmosphere of a space?
Laura Bonell Mas: I think this kind of tiling affects the atmosphere in many ways. They always add colour, so using relatively neutral furniture and walls you still get a joyful result.
Their cold materiality is also important to note. We decided to combine the tiling with wooden floors, especially in the parts of the house that have little natural light, or none at all, to add some warmth. I think, as a result, the atmosphere you get in the bedroom or the study is completely different to that of the living room.
But mainly, I think this kind of flooring gives an aged kind of feeling. It seeks to maintain the old character of this kind of building but with a twist. The combination of old and new gives an interesting atmosphere to the space, and by recycling some of the existing materials, it also allowed us to reduce the expense in new ones.
Read on for Bonell Mas’ project description:
Renovation of an apartment in Barcelona
The project consists in the complete refurbishment of an apartment of about 100m2, in the Eixample area of Barcelona.
The geometry of its original plan layout responded to the building typology of the Eixample, with load-bearing walls parallel to the façade and the distribution of the rooms to each side of a long corridor. At the same time, though, it was partially determined by the fact that it is a corner building, which means that the entrance space is rotated 45º relative to the rest of the apartment.
Scheme isometric
The main strategy of the project was to enhance these different geometries to allow visual continuity and greater amplitude of space, by defragmenting the excessive compartmentalisation.
Partition walls were removed (bearing walls were not modified in any case) and the bathrooms and the kitchen were redistributed around one of the inner courtyards, so that the spaces or rooms are concatenated and the idea of a long corridor is destroyed. The needs of the client and future user, who would be living alone or with a couple, influenced decision making: less rooms, and bigger.
The presence of the original building components was especially important to preserve the atmosphere of an Eixample apartment. The suspended ceiling, with its existing cornices, was kept where possible, and the wooden balcony doors were restored. The windows that had to be changed and the interior doors that had no use anymore were recycled into the enclosures of a new piece of furniture.
The hydraulic tile floor, which had been covered for years with another ceramic pavement, was recovered and reattached following new guidelines: it is maintained as it was in the living room and dining room, while in the rest of the apartment it is combined with an oak parquet flooring, with the intention to create “carpets” that point out some of the liveable areas and suggest paths.
This old materiality is complemented with some made to measure furniture, which shows autonomy from the original structure with its curved shapes and directs the user through the space. These are various tables made with recycled teak wood and a big piece of furniture situated at the entrance of the apartment, and which has a double function of bookshelves and coat wardrobe on the outer side and closet for the master bedroom in the inner side. Its height emphasises the will of a fluid space as it doesn’t reach the ceiling, which allows the visual continuity of the structure of ceramic vaults and wooden beams, which in this part of the apartment was left uncovered.
Terracotta tiles resembling brickwork cover parts of this house extension in Dublin by Irish practice GKMP Architects (+ slideshow).
GKMP Architects removed the rear wall of the 1950s semi-detached house at ground level so the kitchen and dining area could be extended into the garden.
The extension was constructed from blockwork before white render and the decorative tiles were added.
The faceted shape of the new structure results in a series of angular interior spaces, while lower walls separate a patio from the garden.
“The angled walls create deep thresholds between inside and outside and make niches for benches,” the architects said.
A layer of sedum covers the roof of the new addition, making it appear to blend in with the garden beyond when viewed from the upper floor.
The project involves the refurbishment and extension of a 1950s semi-detached house in Glenageary, Dublin, Ireland.
The ground floor rear wall is removed to open the house to the south-facing garden. A series of cranked and faceted walls are made that enclose a new dining area and associated external terraces. The angled walls create deep thresholds between inside and outside and make niches for benches. They are made from blockwork and are faced in render and terracotta tiles.
The timber roof of the extension is covered in sedum to have a visual connection with the garden when viewed from the upper floor. A rooflight is made at the point of connection between the new and the existing to pull light into the plan.
GKMP Architects is a practice that designs high quality modern architecture. We place a strong emphasis on the careful and inventive use of materials, the qualities of light and the relationship between the building and its context. We consider these issues to be more important than working in a particular style and hope that each project will be a creative interpretation of the client, site, brief and budget.
Grace Keeley and Michael Pike graduated from UCD in 1998 and established GKMP Architects in Barcelona in 2003 before relocating to Dublin in 2004. The practice has designed a number of high quality housing and public space projects. We have received a number of awards including First Prize in the recent Docomomo Central Bank Competition. Our work has been published internationally and has also been included in a number of exhibitions, including the ‘Rebuilding the Republic: New Irish Architecture 2000-10 Exhibition’ in Leuven, Belgium in May 2011.
During the refurbishment of the second floor apartment in the Spanish city, Romero Vallejo Arquitectos covered the floor in patterned ceramics to remind the couple living in the apartment of their childhood homes.
“The concept of the floor is rooted in our clients’ family memories,” architect Sara Romero told Dezeen.
New green and pink tiles were designed in reference to the historic colours and patterns of Spanish ceramics, with the help of local craftsmen.
“The tiles were produced in close collaboration with local artisans, who we usually work with in designing new products based on traditional elements,” said Romero. “For this project, we carried out colour research based on a traditional tile design.”
A border of green tiles separates each block of patterned designs and links each space together.
All other surfaces including built-in cupboards, cabinets and full-height doors are white, apart from kitchen units picked out in a bright pink colour from the tiles.
As the clients have no children, the original layout has been opened up by reducing the number of bedrooms.
One of the two bathrooms has a translucent glass wall that creates a silhouette of whoever is in the shower.
Romero Vallejo Arquitectos sent us the following text:
Internal renovation of an apartment in the neighbourhood of Santa Teresa, Toledo, Spain
Located on the second floor of a block of flats in a residential area of Toledo, the apartment has six small rooms comprising of a living room, kitchen and four bedrooms, which are all connected via a dark and narrow corridor.
Our clients, a couple with no children, require more spacious, comfortable and lighter living areas, without completely changing the original layout of the apartment.
Our proposal is, therefore, to reduce the number of bedrooms and reorganise the rooms in order to make better use of the existing sources of light and ventilation, which will also improve accessibility and energy efficiency.
The main challenge is how to combine the traditional layout with a modern and functional design and how to provide continuity between the various rooms, whilst also allowing them a suitable degree of independence. In order to achieve these objectives, all woodwork will be made to measure: floor-to-ceiling doors disguised within the furniture, wardrobes, chest-of-drawers, bookcases, shelving, kitchen units, etc.
A coloured carpet, contrasting with the pale coloured walls and ceilings, covers the entire floor of the home, reinforcing the continuity between the various spaces. Whilst the size, type and colour of the decorative floor tiles correspond to the scale and identity of each room. As such, the layout works as both a sequence of individual units as well as a singular, continuous space.
The use of traditional material for joining, such as hydraulic cement tiles, is closely linked to the owners’ family memories. This type of flooring is produced locally by hand, allowing us to qualify the pigmentation of the decorative motifs according to needs.
Casa Collage by Bosch.Capdeferro – 2011 Interior Design prize. Photo by Jose Hevia (also top)
Entries can be located anywhere in the world as long as they substantially use tiles made in Spain and must have been completed between January 2011 and October 2013.
A €17,000 prize will be awarded to the jury’s favourite architecture project and the same amount to an interior, while the best student design will receive €5000.
Architecture and interior projects should be submitted to premios@ascer.es and students should post their work to: ASCER, Ginjols, 3, 12003 Castellon, Spain.
Jaume I High School by Ramón Esteve Cambra – 2010 Distinction, architecture category. Photo courtesy of ASCER
Open call: 2013 Tile of Spain Awards for architecture and interior design
The Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association (ASCER) has now launched the twelfth edition of the competition that celebrates the innovative and creative use of Spanish ceramics in interior design and architecture around the globe.
Jaume I High School by Ramón Esteve Cambra – 2010 Distinction, architecture category. Photo courtesy of ASCER
The twelfth annual Tile of Spain Awards is now open for entries for the 2013 competition, welcoming project submissions from international architects, interior designers and students. Projects can be located anywhere in the world, but the key criteria for consideration is that a project must make significant use of Spanish ceramics in the formal part of the building – floor, wall or facade – and must have been completed between January 2011 and October 2013.
Spanish Pavilion in Expo Zaragoza by Francisco Mangado – 2008 Architecture prize. Photo courtesy of ASCER
The 2013 Tile of Spain Awards offers a prize fund of 39,000 Euros divided into three categories: Architecture (17,000 Euros), Interior Design (17,000 Euros) and Student Degree Project (5,000 Euros). The jury may give a further two special mentions in each category.
Fira 2 Metro Station in Barcelona by Toyo Ito – 2011 Special mention: Interior Design. Photo by Gori Salva
For this edition, the jury chairman is the prominent German architect Matthias Sauerbruch, founding partner of Sauerbruch Hutton, with offices in Berlin and London. Other jury members include the Italian architect Luca Molinari, curator and producer of cultural events related to contemporary architecture, design and photography; the architect Manuel Gallego, Gold Medal of Architecture 2010 in Spain; the young designer Tomás Alonso, founding partner of OKAY Studio London; the Portuguese architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça; Ignacio García Pedrosa from Paredes & Pedrosa studio; and Ramón Monfort of the Architects Association of Castellon, Spain.
Fira 2 Metro Station in Barcelona by Toyo Ito – 2011 Special mention: Interior Design. Photo by Gori Salva
In previous editions the competition jury comprised distinguished architects such as Juan Navarro Baldeweg, William J.R. Curtis, Terence Riley, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Carlos Ferrater, Luís Moreno Mansilla, Benedetta Tagliabue.
The restoration of Santa Caterina Market, Barcelona, by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue – 2004 Architecture prize. Photo courtesy of ASCER
About the President of the Jury: Matthias Sauerbruch
Matthias Sauerbruch (1955 Constance, Germany) is a founding partner of Sauerbruch Hutton, an architecture practice with offices in Berlin and London, concerned with the creation of functional, sensual and conscientious architecture with individuality. The practice is noted for its synthesis of colour in the design process, and for the use of fluid curvilinear forms with the Brandhorst Museum (Munich) as prime example. Matthias Sauerbruch is among 7 international architects bestowed with the AIA Honorary Fellowship 2013 of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He is visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, and visiting design critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design (EEUU).
The restoration of Santa Caterina Market, Barcelona, by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue – 2004 Architecture prize. Photo courtesy of ASCER
Previous winners
In recent years the competition has awarded a wide range of projects, recognising the versatility of Spanish ceramics. Last year prizes went to a Catering School in a Former Abattoir by Sol 89 and to The Granada Teacher Training College by Ramon Fernandez – Alonso Borrajo. Awarded projects in the past include: MUCA Auditorium and Music House by Studio COR; Casa Collage in Girona by Bosch.Capdeferro; the Benidorm Promenade by OAB; the rehabilitation of the Santa Caterina Market in Barcelona by Miralles-Tagliabue; the Spanish Pavilion in Expo Zaragoza 2008 by Francisco Mangado and in the Aichi Expo in Japan 2005 by Alejandro Zaera and Farshid Moussavi.
CEIP 2L primary school, Barcelona, by Mestura Arquitectes – 2010 Distinction, architecture category. Photo courtesy of ASCER
Dezeen archive: here’s a roundup of some of the most beautiful Barcelona apartments we’ve featured with decorative geometric floor tiles (+ slideshow).
The most recent story from the Catalan capital to include ornate tile work is an apartment laid with triangular floor tiles that gradually change colour from green to red.
Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola talks to Dezeen about her new tile collection for Italian brand Mutina in this movie filmed at the Domus showroom during Clerkenwell Design Week.
Called Azulej, Urquiola‘s new collection of porcelain tiles features 27 different patterns, including a mixture of geometric and floral designs, available in white, grey and black colour palettes.
“The idea of Mutina was always to defend the idea of ceramic tiles as very natural,” says Urquiola. “We never use colours that are strong, always quite natural.”
Azulej is Urquiola’s fourth tile collection for Mutina, and the first to feature digitally printed patterns.
“This year, possibly after all of the work we have done with my studio and other studios, we [decided] to work with printing and with patterns,” Urquiola says. “[Azulej is] a quite industrial tile, very simplified, 20 x 20 cm.”
Urquiola believes that the success of her continued collaboration with Mutina is down to her good relationship with the company, which appointed her as art director in 2011.
“The best [projects] I got were always coming from good relations with people I like,” she says. “In the case of Mutina especially, when they asked me to become art director, [which] is not normally something I want to do, I said: ‘okay.'”
Clerkenwell Design Week 2013: Spanish atelier MUT patterned these tiles with shapes that look like overlapping pieces of coloured paper.
The hexagonal cement floor tiles are designed to imitate the psychedelic patterns seen through a kaleidoscope.
Four different designs range from a scattering of shapes to a complete radial design, which can be mixed and matched to create a multitude of patterns.
Manufactured in Spain by tile specialists Entic designs, they are available in a blue- or red-based palette.
Scroll on for more information sent by the designers:
Keidos
Following the success of Drops, the previous collection of hydraulic ceramic floor tiles exhibited in Milan, enticdesigns is again teaming up with the Spanish studio, MUT design, to create it’s new collection, this time inspired by one of the most emblematic toys of our childhood; the kaleidoscope.
The multi-coloured pieces of Keidos form a new emotive and playful design collection. Keidos, as with it’s predecessor Drops, breaks with formal tradition, distancing itself from a rigid, modular system that characterised the hydraulic floors at the end of the 19th Century.
Thanks to simple geometry, the four pieces that make up Keidos, represent the pieces of indescribable beauty captured by kaleidoscopes. Little, delicately-coloured and irregular segments have become the common denominator in this new project.
Conceptualised to allow for thousands of combinations, the new design for enticdesigns offers as many unique solutions as there are spaces. With the versatile colour palette, Keidos floors allow for elegant and inspirational designs for hidden corners and places of reflection. This collection offers customisation without limits with its different pieces. 100% made in Spain.
This renovated apartment in Berlin features raw concrete ceilings and floors that combine oak parquet with decorative tiles (+ slideshow).
Local architects Marc Benjamin Drewes and Thomas Schneider teamed up to design the apartment for a couple and their children, creating two bedrooms, a bathroom and an open-plan living room and kitchen.
The project is named Box 117 and the architects refer to the two white-painted bedrooms and bathroom as “simple boxes” with a narrow shadow gap around the tops of the walls to highlight the edges.
The wooden parquet flooring runs down one side of the apartment beneath white-washed timber ceilings. The red and white cement tiles are positioned on the opposite side underneath the exposed concrete ceilings.
“The raw concrete ceilings are preserving the industrial character,” says Drewes. “Partly old with a wooden pattern, partly new with a smooth surface, the ceiling tells something about the history of the space.”
Each room has a floor-to-ceiling height of 3.4 metres, allowing for overhead storage and an elevated sleeping area in the children’s bedroom.
Here’s a project description from Marc Benjamin Drewes:
Box 117
A couple with two little kids moved into this loft in a Berlin backyard.
A continuous space for a kitchen, living area and sleeping area for the parents surrounds two boxes in which you find the children’s room and the bathroom. This open layout creates the loft character of the space.
Floor plan
The children are sleeping in a niche above a litte storage next to the children’s room. That way one takes advantage of the clear height of 3.4m to create more living area. The sleeping area of the parents can be closed with a room-high sliding door. If the door is open it disappears behind the bathroom-box.
The oak parquet and the cement tiles on the floor are creating a basis full of character for the simple boxes with a limewash coat. A shadow gap all around separates these boxes from the existing elements of the space and all doors are flush with the wall to accentuate the simple form. The raw concrete ceilings are preserving the industrial character. Partly old with a wooden pattern, partly new with a smooth surface the ceiling tells something about the history of the space.
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