Beach House consists of the subtitle renovation of an attic in the Lavapiés neighbourhood of Madrid, designed by gon architects.

30 years ago, Manuel bought and moved into this 30-square-meter attic. The configuration of the space was never modified. In the middle of the pandemic, Manuel, influenced by the vital limitation of confinement, decided to make a total and radical renovation of his home.

A sloping roof and their exposed wooden beams made the attic a somewhat gloomy and unsustainable place, and the house included two load-bearing walls that segregated it into three spaces and an underused terrace.

The architects’ strategy can be summed up in three words: demolish, perforate and furnish.

Three operations as clear as they are precise, with minimum energy and maximum results. The answer is a bright, carefree and comfortable house. The materials used are few but very well chosen: ceramic, paint and mirror.

The final image of the attic is a large qualified room, spatial, luminous, thermally efficient and with an atmosphere that can be modified.

Turning the room into a scenography that opens and closes according to the mood, as the curtain of a theater opens and closes.

The load-bearing wall between the bedroom/terrace and the living space is removed to generate unity; new perforations are made in the roof to introduce as much natural light as possible, and the perimeter of the house is equipped with a new floor-to-ceiling storage system, covered with mirrors which make it disappear.

Different (and few) pieces of furniture and a common denominator, the floor.

A Klein blue polyurethane paint that runs throughout the house, as if it were a marine carpet, helping to blur the boundaries between interior/exterior, public/private, open/closed.

The actions of rest and relaxation take place, metaphorically speaking, in a cave: a threshold lacquered in charcoal gray from which, in a horizontal position, you can look at the sky of Madrid both day and night.

For gon, Beach House is a vacation house in the center of a city without the sea for a person who lives alone; a space that is especially enjoyable in solitude.