Location

Valencia, Spain

Year

2025

Programme

Interior

Area

200 m²

Status

Completed

Client

First of a Kind

The apartment occupies a building from 1890 in Ciutat Vella, the old town of Valencia, where Roman, medieval and modernist fabric sit within a few streets of one another. It arrived with its period intact: Nolla mosaic floors, wrought ironwork, plaster mouldings, century-old doors, fragments of polychrome paint. These elements are protected. The project takes them as its measure rather than its obstacle — what is original is restored and kept in view, what is new is built to its proportion.

Ciutat Vella Apartment — dining room and enfilade, the long table beneath restored cornices

Two registers, one apartment

The plan holds two registers. The public rooms — the dining room, the living room, the enfilade between them — keep the ornament of the original apartment: pale lime-plaster walls, carved cornices, the geometric Nolla mosaic underfoot. The private rooms are lined in dark stained oak, a continuous panelled surface that draws walls, doors and storage into one quiet volume. To move through the apartment is to move between these two conditions, the worked surface of 1890 and the calm of the new work.

Ciutat Vella Apartment — view through the carved period doors along the enfilade

Ciutat Vella Apartment — the enfilade between the public rooms

Ciutat Vella Apartment — carved lime-plaster panelling in raking daylight

Ciutat Vella Apartment — open period doors revealing the oak-lined private room beyond

Ciutat Vella Apartment — dining chairs on the geometric Nolla mosaic

Ciutat Vella Apartment — shuttered window and Nolla mosaic in the public rooms

Ciutat Vella Apartment — restored carved cornice

Ciutat Vella Apartment — fragment of restored polychrome plaster relief

The thresholds are made

The two registers meet at the floor. The Nolla mosaic and the stone of the original rooms give way to oak, laid in chevron, in the private wing; the change of material is resolved on a curve, the timber drawn around the edge of the stone rather than cut against it. Each passage from old to new is given a precise line. The transitions are constructed, not assumed.

Ciutat Vella Apartment — the curved threshold where stone gives way to oak laid in chevron

Ciutat Vella Apartment — the oak-lined volume drawn around the edge of the original rooms on a curve

Material and light

The materials are few: travertine, oak, lime plaster, linen, wool. They are chosen for how they hold light. Travertine lines the bathrooms, warmed by brass. Lime plaster carries the public walls, taking the filtered daylight from the street. Dark oak holds the private rooms, where light is run indirectly along the head of the panelling so the rooms can be inhabited at low level after dark. Colour is kept out. The work is done by texture and by the temperature of the light.

Ciutat Vella Apartment — private bedroom lined in dark oak, light run indirectly along the panelling

Ciutat Vella Apartment — dark oak bedroom with indirect cove light after dark

Ciutat Vella Apartment — bouclé armchair in the dark-oak private wing

Ciutat Vella Apartment — travertine washbasin warmed by brass

Ciutat Vella Apartment — travertine shower with brass fittings

Ciutat Vella Apartment — travertine niche detail

Furniture as extension of the rooms

The furniture continues the architecture. Vintage pieces from Nekonato Gallery sit with works by CLC Arte, chairs by New Works and lighting by Venicem; bespoke pieces were made as extensions of the rooms, in the same materials and at the same register. Nothing competes with the protected fabric. The apartment is furnished the way it is built, with few decisions, each one held.

Ciutat Vella Apartment — bespoke round table against fluted oak

Ciutat Vella Apartment — oak-lined corridor with a bench at its end

Ciutat Vella Apartment — bedroom with a framed work resting against the oak

Ciutat Vella Apartment — round work by CLC Arte with a carved stool on a wool rug

The original apartment stays legible in its public rooms and quiet in its private ones. The two readings hold without blurring.

Ciutat Vella Apartment

Two registers, one apartment

The thresholds are made

Material and light

Furniture as extension of the rooms