Domesticities around a table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba
09/09/2023.
[MAD] Spain
metalocus, ADELA BONAS
metalocus, ADELA BONAS
Spanish architects Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba were commissioned to renovate the project for this house, located in the central area of Madrid's Salamanca district. This project is the first chapter of their Urban Cabinets series.
Urban Cabinets is a concept that mixes architecture with furniture, giving value to craftsmanship, small businesses, and made-to-measure products. For this project, the focus is on two tables, the first one located in the kitchen and the second one in the living room-office area.
Urban Cabinets is a concept that mixes architecture with furniture, giving value to craftsmanship, small businesses, and made-to-measure products. For this project, the focus is on two tables, the first one located in the kitchen and the second one in the living room-office area.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Details of two tables. Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba.
Floor Plan. Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba.
Axonometric. Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba.
Situation plan. Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba.
The house had a divided structure that prevented access to the terrace, ventilation and natural light. Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba reconfigured the house, recovering the terrace and opening up the public spaces for its enjoyment, and leaving the structure uncovered.
The house has two main areas. The kitchen, which has the main table, made from coloured terrazzo and dotted with confetti pieces, resting on three pairs of cylinders, allowing the surrounding space to be used freely; on the other hand, there is also a large oculus from which to look out.
The other area, the living room-office, has a free working surface, thanks to a second table made of folded steel plates and a wooden tabletop, which are joined together without screws or joints.
The house has two main areas. The kitchen, which has the main table, made from coloured terrazzo and dotted with confetti pieces, resting on three pairs of cylinders, allowing the surrounding space to be used freely; on the other hand, there is also a large oculus from which to look out.
The other area, the living room-office, has a free working surface, thanks to a second table made of folded steel plates and a wooden tabletop, which are joined together without screws or joints.
Urban Cabinet Series (1): Domesticities around the table by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba. Photograph by José Hevia.
Description of project by Beatriz Arroyo and Lys Villalba
Urban Cabinets is a series of domestic renovation projects exploring design strategies around the notion of ‘furniture-architecture’, or ‘furnitecture’. In each of them, a family of ‘furnishings-turned-spaces’ generates domesticities halfway between these two scales. The furniture grows, it becomes XXL and is thought of in architectural terms. Value is placed on custom, hand-made materials and artisanal products from small companies, whose final in-situ execution will create a dialogue between the different trades in each field.
The first project in the series is the renovation of a home from the fifties in the Salamanca neighbourhood, in central Madrid. The original space, which divided the public sphere of the house into different rooms – entrance hall, living room, study, kitchen, hallway –, prevented cross ventilation, the enjoyment of southern sun exposure during the winter, and access to the terrace. The refurbishment proposes unifying this domestic realm – clearing and leaving the structure visible, as well as recovering the original terrace space – and articulating it by means of a series of ‘furnitectures’ that will service this large family dwelling.
Eating, chatting, studying, playing, painting, cooking, reading, working… In Urban Cabinet Series (1), everything happens around the table. It is the design of this table – positioned across the space, in an undefined place between programmes – that reconfigures domesticities around. The tabletop, hand-made using terrazzo tiles with a confetti-like finish, is 3.5 metres long by 1.05 metres wide and rests on a structure made of three pairs of metal cylinders anchored to the floor, thus freeing up all the surrounding space.
On one side of the table, the kitchen, whose shorter side becomes the second piece in this family of small ‘furnitectures’: a reversible cupboard with a worktop space on one side and hall wardrobe on the other, and punctured by a porthole opening for one to peer through when arriving home.
Towards the other side of the home, the living room-office space, where a second table organises a collective study area. Two folded steel plates as side supports and a wooden tabletop, with a standardised maximum length of 3.66 metres, are blended together using no screws or joints, creating an open and free work area for the whole family.
More information
Architects
Builder
In-Out.
Location
Street Duque de Sesto, Madrid, Spain.
Photography
Beatriz Arroyo
Beatriz Arroyo studied architecture and a few years later Fine Arts. In her work, she tries to build spaces incorporating craftsmanship and good trades. Her main objective is to meet the wishes and needs of the people who will inhabit them, understanding their lifestyle. The search for a balance between the functional, the beautiful, the personalized, and the unique, gives rise to projects that incorporate good design into their daily lives, in a simple way.
In her plastic work, she explores her experiences as a diary, as fragments of life.
In her plastic work, she explores her experiences as a diary, as fragments of life.
Lys Villalba
Lys Villalba (Madrid, 1981) is an architect, educator and independent researcher, graduate of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid ETSAM (M.Arch 2008) and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s GSAPP (2016-2017). Her work explores the intersection of architecture and the social, technological, and political realms, and was nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative 2016.
Her research The City Writes Itself received the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts/Arquia fellowship 2016, the Matadero Madrid/Tokyo Wonder Site grant 2015, and was exhibited at the Japan Pavilion 16th Venice Biennale 2018.
Villalba is cofounder of Zoohaus Collective, whose project Collective Intelligences has developed fieldwork research and prototyping projects in 15 countries, in collaboration with universities, cultural institutions and local collectives; and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna.
Villalba is a professor at IED Madrid since 2012, and has been a Visiting Proffesor at different architecture
schools worldwide, such as CUINDA Bangkok (Thailand), Keio University Tokyo (Japan), Lebanese American University New York (USA), Universidad Javeriana Bogotá (Colombia), FAU Arquitectura Santiago (Chile); and a guest juror and lecturer at Harvard GSD Tokyo, University of Virginia, Bartlett School of Architecture, ETSAM, and Columbia GSAPP, among other institutions. Her works and articles have been published in MoMA Ed., Architectural Design, Damdi, El País, World Architecture magazine, Urbanism and Architecture, Arquitectura Viva, Domus web, etc.
Previously she worked as an architect at Foreign Office Architects in London (UK), Herzog & de Meuron in
Basel (Switzerland), Izaskun Chinchilla Architects in Madrid (Spain), and was a member of the editorial board of Arquitectura Viva magazine in Madrid (Spain).
Her research The City Writes Itself received the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts/Arquia fellowship 2016, the Matadero Madrid/Tokyo Wonder Site grant 2015, and was exhibited at the Japan Pavilion 16th Venice Biennale 2018.
Villalba is cofounder of Zoohaus Collective, whose project Collective Intelligences has developed fieldwork research and prototyping projects in 15 countries, in collaboration with universities, cultural institutions and local collectives; and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna.
Villalba is a professor at IED Madrid since 2012, and has been a Visiting Proffesor at different architecture
schools worldwide, such as CUINDA Bangkok (Thailand), Keio University Tokyo (Japan), Lebanese American University New York (USA), Universidad Javeriana Bogotá (Colombia), FAU Arquitectura Santiago (Chile); and a guest juror and lecturer at Harvard GSD Tokyo, University of Virginia, Bartlett School of Architecture, ETSAM, and Columbia GSAPP, among other institutions. Her works and articles have been published in MoMA Ed., Architectural Design, Damdi, El País, World Architecture magazine, Urbanism and Architecture, Arquitectura Viva, Domus web, etc.
Previously she worked as an architect at Foreign Office Architects in London (UK), Herzog & de Meuron in
Basel (Switzerland), Izaskun Chinchilla Architects in Madrid (Spain), and was a member of the editorial board of Arquitectura Viva magazine in Madrid (Spain).
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