Bardo transforms a flat in Barcelona’s Gracia neighbourhood into a continuous sequence rooted in its own structure

Bardo’s first project in Barcelona —the studio founded by Madrid-based architect Emiliano Domingo Bárcena— begins, like so many good renovation projects, with a significant structural decision: the removal of several load-bearing walls in a nineteenth-century building in the Gracia neighbourhood. Sixty square metres that, once freed, allowed the layout of the flat to be completely rethought. What remained standing after that operation —visible, intact, and central— was the element that would determine the language of the whole: the Catalan vault, the revoltó that gives the project its name.

The architect acknowledges that it was this encounter with an unfamiliar constructive typology that set the project in motion. The ceramic vault, with its joists in constant rhythm, held something worth listening to: a cadence that the design would gather and amplify. The decision to leave that element exposed, to emphasise it with colour while the rest of the flat moved in warm neutrals —creams, timbers, soft finishes— made the beams and vaults the only chromatic focus of the home, visible and resonant against a deliberately quiet ground.

The curved language of the project

From that cadence emerges the curved language of the project. The curve here is the geometric transcription of the structural rhythm of the ceiling. The most eloquent gesture is the dressing area, a piece with an undulating front that runs along the bedroom wall like an interior facade. Its curved modules pick up the rhythm of the joists and carry it into the vertical plane. One of those modules conceals a fold-out bed, so that the piece functions simultaneously as wardrobe, spatial boundary, and potential bedroom. Functional and unequivocally architectural.

The open plan is organised around three devices working in concert: the curve, the mirror, and the glass. The large smoked mirror in the kitchen area amplifies natural light and visually connects spaces that the project chooses to keep in continuity. The bedroom enclosure —a curved glass screen— filters the relationship with the daytime zone with the same logic: it gradates, softens the boundary, and turns the transition into a continuous gesture.

The kitchen as domestic core

The kitchen acts as the domestic core of the ensemble. Its fluted timber fronts introduce texture and contrast within the neutral palette, and the rounded island organises the flow between the work area and the dining space. The circular dining table designed by the studio itself, with its base of alternating light and dark timber bands, sets the rhythm of that encounter. Above it hangs a hemispheric lamp in bottle green —a knowing nod to pop— while Starck-aesthetic chairs and vintage pieces from Polop Store compose a space where different eras coexist with ease.

The main bathroom is the only space in the flat fully clad in colour. Yellow ceramic tiles cover walls and ceiling, building an intense and enveloping atmosphere, resolved with coherence through the pointed-arch mirror and the two-tone spherical light fixtures that multiply its reflection.

The bedroom, filtered through the curved glass and framed by the curtains that separate it from the main circulation, holds a composition of great restraint: the integrated headboard in fluted timber, the Murano lamp from the eighties, the striped bedlinen. The space is experienced from the inside outward, as if the entire flat unfolds from that intimate core.

Revoltó is a home that grows from listening to its own structure. Bardo draws the language from the existing material, develops it with coherence at every scale —from the detail of a handle to the circulation of the plan— and makes it liveable with precision. The result is a flat experienced as a continuous sequence, where every decision responds to the same constructive logic and where the passage of time —nineteenth-century architecture, seventies and eighties design, contemporary furniture— coexists without tension.

Furniture

Living and dining area: Dining table, Bardo design. Moon armchair, Pietro Arosio, 2000s. Calder table lamp, Metalarte, 1970s. Coffee table, Philippe Starck, 1980s. 4641 ashtray, Kartell, 1970s. Starck-aesthetic dining chairs, 1980s. Spaghettistool, 1980s. Vintage artwork. Pieces from Polop Store. Vases by Jaime Hayón, RS Barcelona. Emily Moss jug, RS Barcelona. Dressing area: Dúplex BD stool, Javier Mariscal, 1980s, Polop Store. Coloured candles, Pampa Studio. Bedroom: Wendy Wright chair, Philippe Starck, 1980s. Leucos Murano lamp, 1980s. Polop Store.
Reading area: Topurotable lamp, Parachilna.
Flowers: Bathroom: floral arrangement by Simón Odintsóv. Rest of the flat: created by the stylist.

Project: Revoltó.
Location: Barrio de Gracia. Barcelona.
Area: 60 m².
Completed: 2024.
Author: Bardo Arquitectura.
Architect: Emiliano Domingo Bárcena.
Collaborators: Elisa Vegue.
Photograph: Germán Sáiz.
Styling: Ismael López Portilla.
Furniture: Polop Store, RS Barcelona.
Source: María Camila Martínez.

Emiliano Domingo. Bardo Arquitectura

Fundado en 2021, Bardo Arquitectura es el estudio dirigido por el arquitecto Emiliano Domingo, cuyo trabajo se mueve entre la arquitectura, el interiorismo y el diseño de mobiliario. Desde su creación, el estudio ha apostado por una práctica proyectual que entiende el diseño como un proceso integral, capaz de abordar con la misma atención tanto la escala arquitectónica como el detalle más preciso. Ver biografía completa.

Project by Emiliano Domingo. Bardo Arquitectura