Inhabited Corridor

In a long, narrow apartment in Barcelona's Eixample district, the result of a historic transformation that fragmented old through-plan dwellings into smaller units, creating a typology organized around the corridor, the opportunity arose to reflect on the duality between serving and served spaces. The apartment, now transformed after decades of partitions, presented a functional but rigid geometry: a sequence of interlocking rooms, served by a dark corridor that led from the entrance to the center of the building, toward the sunlight and air of the main façade.

The project began as a task of domestic archaeology. Scratching away layers, reading traces, an arched threshold was revealed. That trace was key to undoing the rigidity of the previous layout and rethinking the hallway, not only as a place of passage, but as a habitable, flexible, available, and open space.

From this intersection, the project proposes a new order: at the light-filled end of the apartment, beneath the original moldings, the communal activity is now concentrated. Where once there was a bedroom, today there is a dining area, and in its closet, the kitchen emerges. In the center, a tilting terrazzo island table allows the space to adapt, alternating uses and times.

The "nameless room"—the enlarged hallway—becomes a mutable space. Its boundaries, redrawn by movable wooden partitions, allow for a play with openness and intimacy. When the doors fold back, light and air flow through the entire rear of the floor; when they close, private corners appear. After stripping away the layers of the existing space, the domestic scale is recovered through curved fixtures and dual uses. There, light spills over a yellow shower and filters through unexpected entrances.

The project engages in dialogue with what was and what could be, transforming inherited traces into new uses. Between the noble and the utilitarian, between night and day, this intervention reclaims the spaces in between. Because sometimes the most valuable things happen in moments of transition, in the spontaneity of a conversation when a door opens or when you pass someone in the hallway.