How One Barcelona Firm is Taking the City's Historic Housing to Stylish New Heights
Apartments in the seaside Spanish city of Barcelona, especially those situated in the late-19th-century Eixample district, often come with desirable assets: double-height ceilings with fancy friezes; French doors leading to balconies; cement tile floor tiles embellished with a riot of colors and patterns.
What most don’t have is a layout suitable for modern life: Original kitchens tend to be minuscule (they were designed for the maid after all), and windowless bedrooms can make you feel like you are doing penance.
"The first thing we do is look at the light and the how we can alter the floor-plan to let more of it in," says Rubén Berenguer, one-third of Nook, a Barcelona studio that has become the go-to for (principally foreign) buyers looking to turn their fixer-uppers into homes as sunny as the city's weather.
The other two "Nook People" (as they call themselves) are Ann García and Joan Cortés. They work together in an old industrial loft in the Poblenou neighbourhood, which they converted into a spectacular co-working space with a freestanding volume in its center that serves as a meeting room.
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