A Table (II) in Barcelona, Spain by ESCOLANO + STEEGMANN

A table can be the malleable heart and hub of a home—an interchangeable infrastructure that’s so much more than a simple piece of furniture. Maybe it’s where you begin your morning, gather to eat each night, or sip tea after a long day at work. Maybe it’s the spot you work from at home, the place you toss your keys, stow mail, save only for special occasions, or exhibit fresh flowers. Here, Barcelona-based architect Adrià Escolano and his partner David Steegmann have used the humble table as an architectural device to reconnect a rather disparate apartment in their hometown.

Set within the hillside district of Gràcia in Barcelona, the 140 square metre apartment was dark with most rooms being closed off or disconnected from the street-facing exterior, or the patio to the back. Adrià was charged with breathing new life into the space, opening it out and adding warmth and light, as well as updating the existing kitchen and bathroom.

Two materials work to weave the space together: an undulating landscape of ceramic tiles in glossy, rich ochre reds, and rose-coloured granite for a series of horizontal surfaces and tables. Where rooms were once centred around a closet, Adrià has reworked the distribution of the space and opened out existing partitions and walls, which has allowed light to flood in and for the apartment to become a set of public rooms, each unrestricted, and visible and intersected with the next. Round arches are a nod to Barcelona’s defining Art Nouveau era, while patterned tiles across the floor also reference the city’s architectural past and the apartment’s original floor plan.

The former cupboard centrepiece has been replaced with a wide, oval-shaped granite table, which—as so many tables do—doubles as kitchen bench space and, eventually, will work countless other functions (a cocktail bar? A ping-pong table?). Ultimately conceived as more framework than furniture, the table plays protagonist of each of the apartment’s living areas.