Lots of people get lost in novels; architect Mariana de Delás’s client wanted to curl up and live in her favorite book. Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees is a fable about an 18th century young baron who breaks away from his restricted life by climbing into the tree canopy and leading a rich arboreal existence. Mariana, who runs her own multidisciplinary studio in Madrid, Barcelona, and Majorca, gamely did a deep read and dubbed the project House for Cosimo Piovasco after the novel’s main character.
Her client, she tells us, is an artist who runs an emerging gallery in Madrid, and her small one-bedroom apartment is in a 1940s four-story building near the city’s famed Rastro flea market. As an ode to Calvino, Mariana and her team removed internal partitions and in the exposed roof inserted an industrial treehouse-like mezzanine that turned the cramped setup into a duplex. The design works as an art piece, an architectural interpretation of the book, a space enhancer, and a hideaway. Come see.
Photography by Miguel de Guzman and Rocio Romero of Imagen Subliminal, courtesy of Mariana de Delás.
Above: The mezzanine rises above the living room and kitchen and lends the space an urban cabin feel. The sofa, bookshelves, and stair, among other things, were designed by Mariana’s studio and built, she explains, “using square and circular section tubular bars welded and painted by the steel shop on the street level below. All serve as a way to experiment with metal and its off-cuts, and the maximization of the space.” Above: The room formerly had a dropped ceiling that hid a ventilation cavity. The custom kitchen is built from red plywood: “it comes already stained—it took us a while to find and we are super happy with it,” says Mariana. The perforated overhead panel now covers the air unit.
The art throughout is from the owner’s gallery, Cinco Tejas.
Above: The faucet is Ikea’s Bosjön, available in the US only in a stainless finish. Open shelving next to the sink holds spices and condiments, but just about all else is hidden inside the cabinets. The bar pulls are lacquered wooden dowels, and the window frames were built by a local carpenter. Above: “To keep his books, Cosimo constructed a kind of hanging bookcase, sheltered as best he could from rain and nibbling mouths,” Mariana quotes from the novel, noting that the overhead platform of painted metal can be seen as metaphoric branches. The mezzanine holds a study area overlooking the main quarters and there’s bedroom tucked in the back.
The floating panel of orange Plexiglas “lets the skylights shine through the surface and doubles as a lamp that floods the space with a warm orange light at night.”
Above: The ceiling is faced with cork panels “to provide insulation for a short period of time.” Mariana describes the setup as “ongrowing”: the plan is for an additional floor to be added to the space as soon as permitting is granted, “to keep on growing vertically; to keep on gathering light, to keep on looking from above.”
The additional floor will contain an additional bedroom with a living area and terrace, and the existing kitchen will expand.
Above: A balcony with sliding glass doors opens up the space. The yellow metal fan is a design by Mariana and architect Marcos Duffo: “we currently make them on request and are looking for someone to produce them.” The red plastic table lamp and its companion hanging light in the kitchen are street market finds from a trip to Hong Kong. Above: The numbered chairs were purchased at a thrift store in the neighborhood. Above: The “hanging staircase” is accessed via a built-in cabinet that doubles as a landing. Above: The greenery continues in the bathroom courtesy of a gridwork of tiles. Above: The loft bedroom. “From the tree Cosimo looked at the world; everything seen from up there was different…” Mariana quotes from Calvino. Above: The downstairs is rendered in yellow and the upstairs canopy in green.
Here’s another high-concept remodel by Mariana de Delás:
When you register as a free Member of the Remodelista family of websites (Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home), you gain access to all current posts plus 10 archived posts per month, our internal bookmarking tool, and the community bulletin board.
Access 10 archived posts (older than one year) per month on each site
Use of our internal bookmark tool, so you can save products, posts, and other pages for quick reference
Access to our community bulletin board so you can ask and answer design-related questions
Unlimited access to the Product Catalogs, Design Travel sources, and Architect & Designer Directory listings
Choose from our ten newsletters to keep up with the latest on the sites
Or Subscribe for Maximum Value!
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Annual subscribers pay 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
×
Subscribe to the Remodelista family of websites
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Annual subscribers pay 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
×
Sorry! As a registered member you get 10 free posts from our archive (posts more than a year old) every 30 days. You have reached your limit for this 30-day period. If you would like to access unlimited posts from the archive (ad free, too), become a subscriber today, and keep reading as many articles as you want.
Full Access Individual Subscription
Benefits include:
Unlimited access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home sites
Ad-free browsing environment
Unrestricted access to 30,000+ archived posts
Receive the full-text daily newsletters
All features that Members have access to
Annual subscribers pay just 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
Sorry! You have reached your limit of three (3) free posts from our archive every 30 days. You can increase this to 10 posts by joining as a free Member, or read unlimited posts with no ads by becoming a paid Subscriber.
Subscribe to the Remodelista family of websites
For $5/month ($59.99 paid annually) you'll enjoy unlimited, ad-free access to Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home and all the benefits of Membership.
Annual subscribers pay 50% off the monthly subscription price of $9.99
Become a Member at no charge
When you register as a free Member of the Remodelista family of websites (Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home), you gain access to all current posts plus 10 archived posts per month, our internal bookmarking tool, and the community bulletin board.
Have a Question or Comment About This Post?
Start the Conversation