{"id":66811,"date":"2026-06-20T17:35:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T17:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/bardo-disena-en-el-barrio-madrileno-de-puerta-del-angel-una-casa-que-no-queria-ser-diafana\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T07:41:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:41:02","slug":"bardo-designs-a-home-in-madrids-puerta-del-angel-neighbourhood-that-refused-to-be-open-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/bardo-designs-a-home-in-madrids-puerta-del-angel-neighbourhood-that-refused-to-be-open-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Bardo designs a home in Madrid’s Puerta del \u00c1ngel neighbourhood that refused to be open plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

When interior design sets aside convention and decides to invent, projects like Casa Macedonia emerge \u2014 conceived by Emiliano Domingo, founder of Bardo Arquitectura<\/a>, one of the most promising young architects, who surprises us with each new project through innovative and bold proposals.<\/p>\n\n\n

The brief he received was built on an unequivocal premise: the client did not want an open-plan space. He wanted the opposite \u2014 intimacy, compartmentalisation, rooms that could exist in their own right. At a moment when open-plan living remains the standard response in residential architecture, Domingo answered with a fragmented floor plan, organised around an interior courtyard that acts as a silent articulator. And from that initial decision \u2014 discreet on paper, radical in its consequences \u2014 everything else follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprise as structure<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The journey through Casa Macedonia unfolds as a sequence of scenes. The courtyard allows for continuous perimeter circulation, so that each room is discovered without having been anticipated. It is a spatial strategy with theatrical roots \u2014 the off-screen, the threshold as a moment \u2014 with very concrete effects on the domestic experience. The house does not reveal itself all at once; it opens in layers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guiding thread of that discovery is neon acrylic. A structural column and beam \u2014 immovable by definition \u2014 were clad in acid green polymethylmethacrylate, fluorescent, impossible to ignore. The technical constraint disappears; in its place, a sculptural piece appears that structures thresholds, filters light, generates reflections and turns each passage between rooms into a scenographic transition. Here lies the key to Bardo’s approach: instead of concealing problems, they become actors in the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n

That green-neon acrylic runs through the home like a signature. It appears in the doorframes, in the edges that separate the bedroom from the living room, in the reflections it casts on the continuous white microcement floors. Up close, it filters the view into adjacent spaces, overlays planes, and thins the boundary between the inside and outside of each room. It is simultaneously structure and scenery, boundary and membrane. Rather than separating, it connects.<\/p>\n\n

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The living room: the central scene<\/h2>\n\n\n

The living room is the epicentre of the project and, most likely, its hardest space to classify. In it coexist the dining table with Steel and Leather chairs by Katavolos, Kelley and Littell \u2014 pieces from the nineteen-fifties sourced from Galer\u00eda A \u2014, the pendant lamp P376 KF2 by &tradition, and a sofa from Westwing wrapped in a white sheet with an orange blanket from Viso Proyect, which occupies the space without apology. The gesture \u2014 covering the sofa as though it were a sculpture half-unveiled \u2014 has something provisional and deliberate about it, consistent with a project that does not draw too clear a line between furniture and scenography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between the two windows, the painting by Miju Lee occupies the visual centre of the space with the authority of something that does not ask for permission: large-scale figuration, an intense palette, images that blend the oneiric and the pop without fully resolving into either category. It is exactly the kind of work that needs a wall like this \u2014 white, still \u2014 for the clash to be complete. Against the side wall, the shelving integrated into the ceramic volume \u2014 black gloss tiles, gridded \u2014 holds books and objects with the same logic as the rest of the house: without disguise. And in the corner of the space, gradient panels \u2014 pink to orange, pink to magenta \u2014 by Fuensanta Sobejano lean against the wall as if waiting to be hung, or as if they preferred that state of provisionality.<\/p>\n\n\n

The result is a space that cannot be read in a single glance. There is too much to look at, and none of it is superfluous<\/p>\n\n

The dining area: the backdrop<\/h2>\n\n\n

Where any other project would have placed a warm white painted wall, Bardo constructed a curved wall panelled in aubergine-lacquered MDF. The curve is deliberate; the colour, unexpected; the ribbed effect, almost organic. This wall acts as a backdrop for the dining area and, at the same time, as a divider between spaces. It is not a decorative element added on top; it is architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n

The photography lights that appear in the images \u2014 with their tripods, their reflectors \u2014 reveal that this space can also be used as a studio, that the home can accommodate work as well as rest. Bardo did not ignore that condition: the space has the amplitude and the underlying neutrality needed to function in two ways simultaneously, without one compromising the other.<\/p>\n\n

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The kitchen: order and subversion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The kitchen is the most precise demonstration of Bardo’s design logic. Against the white grid tiling \u2014 orderly, clear, carrying a certain memory of the traditional \u2014 the deep cobalt blue cabinetry occupies the lower plane with the forcefulness of something that does not seek approval: it seeks presence. The brushed steel handles are the only gesture of restraint in a space that otherwise has none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The natural stone countertop features an undulating profile that runs across the entire front and corners, turning the work surface into something almost topographical. There are no right angles; there are hills and valleys. And above it all, the cylindrical extractor hood lacquered in lemon yellow occupies the centre of the room with the confidence of one who knows they are the centre of the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The removable bar dining table, designed by Bardo, together with the Revolver stools by Hay, allows the kitchen to communicate with the rest of the home without physically opening onto it. The SC68 vase by &tradition, with seasonal flowers, is the only element that changes. Everything else is permanent and deliberate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bedroom: well-earned calm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The main bedroom is discovered from the living room through the neon acrylic frame: an opening set in acid green that introduces the room as though it were an image within another image. The contrast is immediate and deliberate. Where the living room accumulates, the bedroom subtracts.<\/p>\n\n\n

The space is intimate and contained. The window opens into a deep niche in intense aubergine \u2014 the same tone that appears in the curved wall of the dining area, here concentrated in a deep recess \u2014 with a copper arm wall light that casts a warm glow over the lavender linen bedding. Alongside it, a cream and beige fur blanket introduces a texture that invites touch. On the wall, a painting by Ra\u00fal Gal\u00e1n in earthy tones and organic gestures \u2014 ochres, marks that suggest landscape without naming it \u2014 acts as a quiet counterpoint to the more electric figuration of the living room. It is a bedroom that functions like the transitional spaces Bardo has distributed throughout the home.<\/p>\n\n

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Two bathrooms: two arguments<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Casa Macedonia resolves one of its most interesting paradoxes in its bathrooms. Two separate spaces, at opposite ends of the home’s chromatic narrative, that function as a pair of contrasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guest bathroom is a capsule. The small white tile \u2014 tiny, meticulous \u2014 covers the walls, countertop and washbasin column without interruption. Curves appear on every edge and corner, as though the entire space had been sculpted rather than built. The navy lacquered ceiling and the deep green cornice close the volume with a chromatic density that offers no escape. At the centre, the dark anthracite ceramic bowl sink sits on the clad countertop; at the back, the coral red shower curtain. It is the most extroverted space in the house, the one that most directly speaks of the pleasure of dwelling as a total sensory experience.<\/p>\n\n\n

The ensuite bathroom of the main bedroom chooses the opposite argument. Earthy tones, continuous surfaces, a materiality that does not insist. Calm as a strategy. Both belong to the same home; both are equally coherent within it.<\/p>\n\n

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The study and the outdoor shower: the scene continues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Between the interior and the courtyard, Bardo places a study area that deserves attention in its own right. The JFK desk by Norr 11 \u2014 black, with severe lines \u2014 and the Canasta chair by Arrben with a chrome tubular steel frame create a composition that looks towards the outdoor shower through large-format glazing. On the other side of the glass, the ikat-effect tiles \u2014 teal on salmon pink, irregular, almost pictorial \u2014 form the backdrop of the outdoor shower. A chromatic gradient panel by Fuensanta Sobejano, this time in pink, lilac and green, completes the frame.<\/p>\n\n\n

It is one of the home’s most accomplished transitions: from the rigour of the desk to the sensuality of the painted tile, with Madrid’s light as mediator.<\/p>\n\n\n

The courtyard: where the house breathes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The courtyard of Casa Macedonia belongs to another universe and yet remains the same project. After the interior’s chromaticism \u2014 the neon, the aubergine, the deep blue \u2014 the exterior opens onto a palette of terracotta and peach, porous materials, vegetation that inhabits the space. The roof structure, with its green profiles and horizontal slats that filter the light, creates a covered space that is not quite interior, outdoor but not exposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The textile lamps by Kauani \u2014 one in red, another in fuchsia and cream, another in yellow with dots \u2014 hang from the ceiling like ripe fruit from an unknown plant. The continuous masonry bench in painted render, the stone floor, the Mediterranean vegetation \u2014 prickly pear cactus, olive tree \u2014 compose a scene of calm that acts as a structural counterpoint to everything that takes place inside.<\/p>\n\n\n

The outdoor shower, clad in that ceramic ikat blending teal and pink, turns a functional element into a pictorial piece. The brushed brass fittings are the only note of metallic warmth in a space that otherwise moves between the mineral and the vegetal.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Bardo Arquitectura and emotional interiors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Casa Macedonia covers 150 square metres. It is not a large-scale commission, nor a home exceptional in its dimensions. What makes it singular is the density of design decisions it contains, the resolve not to yield at any point to convention, and the clarity with which each gesture responds to an argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emiliano Domingo has spent years building a way of understanding interior design that does not fit the available categories. Neither minimalism nor maximalism, neither decorative eclecticism nor auteur design in the most self-indulgent sense of the term. It is something more elusive and more interesting: a domestic architecture that takes seriously the emotional experience of its inhabitants, trusting in colour and material as arguments of equal weight to form and space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the landscape of Spanish interior design, which tends towards restraint and good taste as its ultimate horizon, Casa Macedonia proposes something else: that a home can be a place to enjoy emotion, and that the act of dwelling can carry the intensity of an experience. Without a doubt, domestic architecture gains in decibels when it is not afraid of risk.<\/p>\n\n\n

Furniture and Art<\/h2>\n\n\n

Entrance<\/strong>: Jarron Nourage table by the Bouroullec brothers for Vitra. 9.5\u00ba chair by Frama and artwork by Alejandro Javaloyas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living room<\/strong>: Africa marquetry side table and black wood side table, both from Rue Vintage. Ekstrem armchair by Terje Ekstr\u00f6m, on loan from Rue Vintage. On the wall, works by Fuensanta Sobejano and lamp by artist Jaime San Mart\u00edn de Haro. Between the windows, painting by Miju Lee. On the floor, Modern Farm decorative sculptures by Ethnicraft, from Espacio Betty. Sofa from Westwing, with blanket from Viso Proyect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dining area<\/strong>: vintage Steel and Leather chairs by Katavolos, Kelley, and Littell, sourced from Galer\u00eda A. In the corner of the aubergine wall, sculpture\/lamp part of the Tuning furniture collection by artists Reparto (Margil Pe\u00f1a and Ana Viglione) & Jes\u00fas Meseguer. Above the table, pendant lamp P376 KF2 by &tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitchen: Revolver stools by Hay, GIGI n\u00ba3 lamp by Warren & Laetitia over the removable bar table designed by Bardo. On the shelves, candles by Pampa Studio. On the countertop, Il Conico teapot by Aldo Rossi for Alessi and Arcs vase by Hay. SC68 vase with flowers by &tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bedroom<\/strong>: glass sculpture by D\u00eda Mu\u00f1oz on the bedside table, painting by Ra\u00fal Gal\u00e1n on the wall, floor lamp by xxx from Espacio Betty. On the bedside table, Collect jug and glasses set by &tradition. On the shelving, Pantella lamp by Louis Poulsen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Study<\/strong>: JFK desk by Norr 11, Gira table lamp by Santa&Cole, Canasta chair by Arrben and artwork by Fuensanta Sobejano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terrace<\/strong>: textile lamps by Kauani, Balcony metal armchair by Hay, Geometric Color side table by Ethnicraft, Cestita lamp by Santa&Cole.<\/p>\n\n\n

Main bathroom<\/strong>: Backenzahn stool by e15, Philipp Mainzer, from Espacio Betty. Guest bathroom<\/strong>: Fish Design side table by Gaetano Pesce.<\/p>\n\n

Project: <\/strong>Casa Macedonia.
Location:<\/strong> Puerta del \u00c1ngel. Madrid.
Completed:<\/strong> 2025.
Area:<\/strong> 120 m\u00b2 casa + 30 m\u00b2 terraza.
Author:<\/strong> Bardo Arquitectura<\/a>. Emiliano Domingo B\u00e1rcena.
Collaborators:<\/strong> Morgan Przeraski, Raquel Calvo Cubero.
Styling:<\/strong> Ismael L\u00f3pez Portilla.
Art consultancy:<\/strong> M\u00eda de Diego Gila.
Furniture:<\/strong> Espacio Betty<\/a>, Rue Vintage<\/a>, Galer\u00eda A<\/a>.
Artworks: <\/strong>Fuensanta Sobejano<\/a>, Miju Lee<\/a>, Alejandro Jabaloyas<\/a>, Ra\u00fal Gal\u00e1n<\/a>, Dia M\u00fa\u00f1oz<\/a>.
Photographer:<\/strong> Germ\u00e1n S\u00e1iz<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Emiliano Domingo, arquitecto fundador de Bardo Arquitectura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Emiliano Domingo. Bardo Arquitectura<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Founded in 2021, Bardo Arquitectura is the studio led by architect Emiliano Domingo, whose work moves between architecture, interior design, and furniture design. Since its creation, the practice has embraced a design approach that understands architecture as an integral process, capable of addressing both the architectural scale and the most precise detail with the same level of attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emiliano Domingo graduated as an architect in 2017 from the Escuela T\u00e9cnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (UPM), earning his degree with honours. After completing his studies, he spent several years gaining professional experience in different architectural practices, a period that allowed him to develop a critical perspective on contemporary practice and to gain a deeper understanding of both the design and construction processes. In 2021, he decided to embark on his own path by founding Bardo Arquitectura, a studio conceived with the intention of exploring new ways of inhabiting through an architecture that is precise, clear, and closely connected to the needs of its clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the studio\u2019s work, geometry becomes a fundamental design tool. It serves as an instrument to organise space, structure the programme, and respond to functional requirements with clarity and coherence. From this foundation, Domingo seeks to develop contemporary solutions capable of interpreting each client\u2019s aspirations, adapting to their ways of living without renouncing spatial exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The studio understands every project as an open process in which multiple scales and disciplines converge. For this reason, its practice also incorporates furniture design and the detailed development of constructive elements, grounded in the belief that the quality of architecture often resides in the precision with which materials and junctions are resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n

This approach is complemented by a close involvement in the construction phase, conceived as an essential part of the project. Attention to building processes, curiosity for techniques, and a willingness to engage with craftsmanship allow Domingo to achieve an architecture in which the initial idea is faithfully translated into built form.<\/p>\n\n

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Bardo Arquitectura
<\/strong>Pinos Baja 89
28029 Madrid
+34 648 214 597
info@bardoarquitectura.com
bardoarquitectura.com<\/a>
@bardo.arq<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Casa Macedonia, Emiliano Domingo proposes an interior design with a theatrical character, where each element forms part of a set, designed to transform the domestic experience and give each room its own identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[578],"tags":[2290,1099,1397,1095],"ppma_author":[296],"class_list":["post-66811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interior-design","tag-bardo-arquitectura","tag-housing-in-madrid","tag-residential-interior-design","tag-viviendas-en-madrid"],"authors":[{"term_id":296,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"andres-moratinos","display_name":"Andr\u00e9s Moratinos","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66811"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68065,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66811\/revisions\/68065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66811"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exagono.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=66811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}