Blue Glass By Martín Peláez Studio

Blue Glass | Madrid, Spain
[Martín Peláez Studio]

It is a comprehensive housing reform project located in the youngest area of the Chamberí neighborhood within a small corrala, a characteristic construction of Madrid at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

The project respects the original structure of the house, maintaining the two load-bearing walls and their existing passageways, and working on the remaining space by creating different rooms with glass block partitions. A duality between two worlds is sought. The old, massive and opaque. The new, light and permeable.
The color blue is introduced as a chromatic memory element of the original state. All the interior carpentry was found painted in that color. According to several neighbors, it is something very particular about the finda, which unfortunately is being lost with the different transformations carried out in the houses.

Following this criterion, the soil of burgundy hydraulic tile installed in the living room area, creating a carpet effect that reveals part of the house’s past and provides identity to the space. Glass is introduced in the interior partitions, made with blocks of different degrees of opacity depending on the face of the wall, playing with transparent and translucent effects, both gloss and matt, providing visual privacy to the bathroom and master bedroom spaces, but allowing in turn, the passage of light from the street to the interior of the house. In the main bedroom, large blackout curtains are also added to provide the flexibility and darkness necessary for moments of sleep.

The house is extremely optimal, with only 40m2 of surface, it houses two bedrooms, a full bathroom space and an interconnected space of living room, dining room and kitchen. It works with a soft geometry, with a curved line to fluidly articulate the different environments of the open space. And with a radical geometry in the kitchen cabinet, creating an element in the shape of a ladder, as useful as it is aesthetic.

This form, in addition to providing value sculptural, it can be used as a closed interior storage support, and an open exterior, as a shelf, offering both an interesting front view from the dining room and a side view from the living room.
The storage volumes, both for the wardrobe and for the kitchen, are attached to the dividing walls and are also presented in blue, giving all the spaces a graphic and fun visual moment.

Furnishing and decoration
The proposed furnishing is purely spontaneous. Fleeing from a finished and fixed image, almost all furniture is created by free composition of “things”.
Read. The bedside tables are two concrete blocks, the dining table is a pine table top with wheels, the coffee table is a mirror that levitates on a brick base, the sofa is a volume made up of upholstered foam modules supported on the ground, looking for horizontality as occurs with the Japanese mattress.

The secondary space is equipped with storage and intended to be used well as a bedroom secondary, office space or games room.
Text description by the architects.