ROOMS INSPIRED BY ROTHKO

Converted from what used to be a shop in Madrid, this duplex with a surreal atmosphere – one that plays around with light and colour – has its living spaces on the ground floor. While the basement is a place to which the owners can escape, with a sauna, screening room and indoor garden

ON THE GROUND FLOOR OF A BUILDING DATING FROM THE 1920S in the central Madrid neighbourhood of Malasana, Casa A12 (A is the initial of the name of the street, 12 the number of the building) is the new project of Cristina Domínguez Lucas and Fernando Hernández-Gil (both born in 1979). Their practice, Lucas y Hernández-Gil, active, chiefly in the capital, since 2007, has attracted international attention by distilling a way of thinking about architecture – we are talking about homes, cafés, restaurants, hotels – with which it has been able to find a precise balance between rigour of construction and aesthetic intuition, the requirements of the mind and of the heart. A former electrician’s shop that has been turned, with the reclamation of the storage space underneath, into a duplex apartment of over

300 square metres, Casa A12 was commissioned by a young couple (with a dog): “They gave us complete freedom to make the space, which was originally very dark, as brightly lit, interesting and flexible as possible,” say the architects. Lovers of natural light, they have introduced a variety of means to take it everywhere, exploiting it to create dialogues or counterpoints of forms, materials and perspectives in every space. Commencing with the entrance: left bare, it is filled with light, modulated by plays of lines, voids and colours “all inspired by the palette of Mark Rothko” and furniture by Kresta Design, a parallel project of the practice. It is not just a matter of aesthetics: if the great curved blue wall appears to be an almost pictorial gesture (in fact it conceals a bathroom), the im

THE ARCHITECTS CHOSE TO PAINT THE DINING TABLE YELLOW: ONE OF THE DETAILS THAT STANDS OUT AGAINST THE NEUTRAL WHITE BACKGROUND

pluvium in the floor that corresponds to it channels light onto a surreal garden underneath. A hortus conclusus in line with the Mediterranean tradition, but enclosed here by metal walls, it has a “lawn” of orange artificial grass and real trees because “the ground floor is the real house, the floor below is intended to be a place of escape, halfway between leisure and work”, with a sauna, cellar and screening room. The apartment is characterized by its oculus windows, placed wherever it was possible to open them in ceilings and floors, for it is not always enough, in order to “bring” light inside, to have it slide over sheets of reflective metal or pass through translucent materials. Nor, in the lower recesses, to turn on LED and neon lights.

To balance the obviousness of the colour white, the architects have painted entire rooms in the manner of Rothko or used his palette to emphasize architectural details. On the

THE HOUSE IS A DUPLEX APARTMENT OF OVER 300 SQUARE METRES

ground floor we find the yellow “brushwork” of the perforated metal top of the table in the living room and of the yellow and blue armchairs in dialogue with the natural colour of wood (cupboards, parquet, bed); in the living room, the off-white of the sofa. The staircase is an immersion in coral orange – a colour that like the blue pays homage in particular to Rothko’s Number 14 (1960). Blue too are the disks painted on various walls, as in the bedroom on the lower level – whose privacy is also defended by a floor-to-ceiling curtain made of a silver fabric that would look just right on a cosmonaut. While the mirrors on the walls create a series of plays of perspective and colour, inventing continual sceneries and views that can be adjusted at will with the swing doors. ○

MIRRORS AND LEDS ARE USED TO CREATE VISUAL EFFECTS AND INTRIGUING PERSPECTIVES