Located in Madrid’s Imperial neighborhood, this 48-sqm apartment was renovated by Alessio Lamarca and Marta Ciabattini around the everyday routines of its future occupant. Instead of beginning with a predetermined aesthetic, the architects considered how the home would actually be used: where bags are placed on arrival, how the kitchen is used, where time is spent, and which spaces and objects are part of daily life. The approach informed both the layout and the scale of individual elements. The original apartment had three bedrooms, a living room, a separate kitchen, and one bathroom. Its condition had remained largely unchanged since the 1960s, with deteriorated finishes, layers of old plaster and paint, and a heavily compartmentalized plan that restricted the available 48 usable square meters. The renovation reduces the layout to two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open living area with an American-style kitchen. Spaces and storage are calibrated to actual use, eliminating elements that were not required and concentrating the available area around everyday activities. The result is a compact home with a layout shaped by occupation rather than by a generic model of domestic life.
The starting point was an apartment described by the architects as being effectively frozen in time since the 1960s. Its obsolete finishes, poor state of repair, and divided rooms created a series of spatial constraints within a limited floor area. The renovation addresses these conditions through a new spatial organization and a strong architectural identity. The project treats the apartment as a setting for everyday routines, allowing the architecture to incorporate different activities and moments within a compact footprint. The kitchen, for example, is sized around its actual use, while storage is designed around the objects required in daily life. The living area accommodates different ways of occupying the space, including sitting on the sofa or floor, reading, and listening to records. The absence of a large dining table reflects the apartment’s specific pattern of use, avoiding space dedicated to functions that are not part of everyday life.
all images ©Alessio Lamarca and Marta Ciabattini
Bright colors become part of the home’s spatial organization
Color forms a central part of the renovation, with coral, pink, deep blue, white, wood, and green details establishing the apartment’s chromatic identity. Pink and coral are used as architectural elements that define zones, circulation routes, and volumes. The architects approach color as an additional construction material, using it to shape the perception of space and to create relationships between light, shadow, and volume. The fixed position of the bathroom, determined by technical constraints, becomes the basis for organizing the connecting hallway. This corridor operates as a chromatic threshold between the daytime social area and the nighttime private zone. A measured block of color establishes a visual axis through the apartment, helping to guide movement while integrating flush storage solutions into the walls. The bathroom is treated as an immersive blue volume, introducing a distinct atmosphere and a complementary color within the wider palette. Elsewhere, the walls are finished in a warm, broken white that provides a continuous background for the changing light, architectural volumes, and stronger colors.
Custom furniture is used throughout the apartment to make efficient use of the limited floor area. In the living zone, a compact arrangement combines the entrance, an integrated bench and drawer units, the kitchen, and the living area within a few square meters. A central element is the American-style kitchen countertop, designed as a curved bar supported by a cylindrical column. The rounded geometry reduces the obstruction created by a conventional rectangular countertop and keeps the entrance circulation open. The underside of the bar is also used to accommodate a small custom bookshelf. The same approach extends into the bedrooms, where built-in wardrobes incorporate the existing structural columns into the new partition walls. This allows the storage to occupy otherwise difficult areas while preserving usable floor space. In the primary bedroom, the wardrobe is modified at the corner to avoid a rigid orthogonal transition at the entrance. The curved edge becomes an open corner bookshelf, softening the visual relationship between the wardrobe and the room while maintaining a clear view into the space.
Wood and lacquer establish another layer of continuity across the apartment. In the kitchen, walnut wood is combined with the specific pink tone of Marga lacquer, creating a warm material and chromatic thread that links the different areas. The same design language continues into the storage elements, while a different lacquer tone, Ave, introduces a shift in the closet. The underlying logic of the renovation remains consistent, but the change in color gives the space a different character. Across the apartment, color, built-in furniture, curved geometries, and carefully integrated storage work together as part of a single spatial strategy. The renovation uses the limited dimensions of the existing apartment as a framework for organizing circulation, domestic functions, and visual relationships around the routines of everyday life.
project info:
name: Alessio Lamarca
architects: Marta Ciabattini and Alessio Lamarca
furniture: CUBRO | @cubro_design
location: Imperial neighborhood, Madrid
floor area: 48 sqm
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edited by: Christina Vergopoulou | designboom
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