Sanmartín Guix, an architectural firm based in Barcelona, aims to enhance the value of the built heritage through rehabilitation and adaptation according to the needs of new generations, providing comprehensive architectural services as well as real estate advice. In this way, the conditions and aesthetics of the buildings are improved, seeking to adapt them to the requirements of all those who wish to visit or inhabit these spaces.
Born from the union between Miguel Rami Guix and Guayente García Sanmartin, this young studio bases its work on the Mediterranean climate, developing different project strategies and constructive solutions according to it. As they themselves argue when facing rehabilitation, they focus on identifying its value, which are the factors that can be recovered, and around that, analyze how to build the project strategy.
Recover, rethink, reuse, repair... These are some of the actions that best define what we do.
Their works intervene in different environments of homes starting from kitchens and bathrooms to bedrooms, living rooms, or even outdoor spaces of the house. Below, we present some of their most outstanding works, sharing those guiding ideas that gave rise to such projects.
House RM
- Architecture: Guayente García Sanmartín
- Location: Barcelona
- Area: 175 m2
- Year: 2021
Text submitted by the authors. The renovation of this modernist house was a real challenge of rehabilitation. Maintaining the original elements and designing it to adapt to the growth of the family meant leaving many things in place, without blurring its essence.
The original 1905 house followed the pattern of the modernist houses of Barcelona's Eixample, characterized by having many rooms chained and linked together facing either the main street or the courtyard. We took advantage of this virtue that makes the house very flexible to change the use of some rooms and provide more changes over time. It was designed to make the most of everything and to let the original elements shine by themselves, it was planned for this jewel of more than 100 years to freeze in time.
IB7
- Architecture: Miguel Rami Guix
- Location: Plaça Dr. Ignasi Barraquer, Barcelona
- Area: 100 m2
- Year: 2019
Text submitted by the authors. The design strategy is to highlight the essential qualities of the house. Brightness, cross ventilation, and views. The space of opportunity to do so is, above all, temporary. It is between the ways of living for those for whom the original house was designed and those of today. Between the past and the future, we live the house as an integrated, flexible, and transformable whole, and we need it to adapt to changes in our lives, much more fluid and malleable than 50 years ago.
The outsourcing of domestic service, whose responsibility now falls on home service apps, has made us re-appropriate the entire space of our home. We have gone from a distribution based on compartmentalization, which sought the segregation of uses and users between served spaces and server spaces, to one that is committed to integration.
The transition between different rooms becomes fluid, and the uses we give to each one only depend on our changing needs. For this reason, the relationships established between rooms and their atmospheric quality are more relevant than their size. We are committed to the environmental quality of the rooms and their flexibility so that everyone can decide how to live in them.
Provença
- Architecture: Guayente García Sanmartín
- Location: Barcelona
- Area: 175 m2
- Year: 2021
Text submitted by the authors. This project was done remotely. The clients lived abroad and moved to live in this apartment from Singapore. They wanted the house to keep all the original essence, the floors, the ceilings, the doors. That is why the intervention was almost a rehabilitation rather than a renovation. The idea was to respect the original elements, but above all to highlight them. The intention was to show that this house dates back to 1905, but that it was lived in 2021, and that it could be adapted to new uses.
The effort was concentrated on modernizing without touching anything. We studied the installations, how to install them without weakening the walls, how to acclimatize the rooms, and how to install the lighting fixtures without damaging the ceilings. The idea was not to imitate what was there but to bring it into play with new elements. That is why all the materials are new, and technological, but timeless, to highlight what was already there. This project is the perfect combination of new and old.
Travessera 354
- Architecture: Miguel Rami Guix
- Location: Barcelona
- Area: 110 m2
- Year: 2017
Text submitted by the authors. The house is an attic of 100 m² with ten more of terrace of a high building and a northwest orientation. Being an attic, it collects valuable light from the inner courtyard of the block that illuminates in the morning, but the excessive compartmentalization of the original distribution sequesters it in small rooms. Rented over the past 30 years to multiple and varied tenants, the house is an overlay of memories in need of a fresh start for its owners. The clients' goals are to create a large living room for play and childcare, a bright kitchen, and bathrooms reminiscent of the sea.
The main strategy is to integrate different uses in larger and more flexible spaces, allowing the elimination of partitions and allowing ventilation and natural light to flow between the two facades throughout the day. The terrace is transformed into a gallery by a continuous wooden balcony, leaving out the noise and pollution of the busy Travessera de les Corts.
Vallirana
- Architecture: Sanmartín Guix Asociados + Adriana G.Dugo
- Location: Barcelona
- Area: 60 m2
- Year: 2022
Text submitted by the authors. This apartment followed the traditional layout of the workshop dwellings of the Gràcia district, characterized above all by having a very narrow bay. In this case, the width of the house was 5m and it was very compartmentalized, with several interior rooms, some of which were illuminated through skylights. The project strategy was to eliminate the hallway and place the two rooms at the ends. In this way, the dining room, living room, and kitchen spaces are transformed into a continuous space that brings light from one end of the house to the other.
As for the materiality, although several structural reinforcements had to be made, we decided to leave the wooden beams and brick walls exposed, underlining the original character of this 1963 house and leaving its scars visible.
