Radical Reuse: How Sancal’s New Madrid Space is Redefining Sustainable Design.

Photography: Asier Rua

In what might be one of the most innovative approaches to sustainable design we’ve seen this year, Spanish furniture manufacturer Sancal has unveiled a project that turns traditional renovation thinking on its head. Their new COLAB space in Madrid’s historic O’Donnell 34 building isn’t just another showroom—it’s a radical experiment in creative reuse that challenges everything we think we know about sustainable commercial interiors.

The project, a collaboration with experimental designer Lucas Muñoz Muñoz, transforms the fourth floor of Spain’s first office building—a 1966 brutalist structure designed by pioneering architect Antonio Lamela. Rather than following the typical demolition-and-replace approach, Muñoz embraced an innovative strategy of material preservation and transformation.

“To create from the existing, transforming everything we didn’t want to use—what theoretically was surplus—into something useful and beautiful,” explains Sancal CEO Esther Castaño-López, describing the project’s ambitious brief.

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Recooked Leftovers: Mo de Movimiento in Madrid by Lucas Muñoz.

Mo de Movimiento is no ordinary restaurant. It’s a phantasmic space brought alive from dead objects, each one resuscitated, re-polished and transformed into something new.

Designer Lucas Muñoz Muñoz with Sancal’s Elena Castaño-López (Art Director) & Esther Castaño-López (CEO).

The renovation’s most striking features emerged from what most would consider waste. Ceiling tiles were reimagined as textured wall panels, saving 360 square metres of non-recyclable material from landfill. The raised floor’s aluminium backing was salvaged and polished to create reflective wall cladding that cleverly distributes natural light throughout the space.

In what might be the project’s most dramatic intervention, entire partition walls were literally walked to new locations within the space, like a carefully choreographed architectural ballet. “It was like a Spanish Easter procession,” Muñoz describes, capturing the almost ceremonial nature of this unusual preservation technique.

The meeting room serves as the project’s conceptual heart, featuring a striking horizontal suspended lamp created from over 100 decommissioned fluorescent tubes. This installation hangs above a Sancal Bold table, embodying the project’s philosophy of finding beauty in the discarded.

The space’s layout cleverly follows the logic of the building’s distinctive sawtooth facade, with work areas oriented to maximize natural light. A system of pivoting textile panels—which Muñoz playfully calls “clocks”—allows for flexible space partitioning while paying homage to Sancal’s upholstery craft.

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What happens when you say goodbye to plasterboard? Melbourne-based architecture practice, Studio Edwards, has a pretty good answer to that question.

“I wanted to bring that language into the Madrid space, creating a process connection between the workshops where the furniture is made and the exhibition space where it is shown.” — Lucas Muñoz Muñoz

Archival photo of Madrid’s historic O’Donnell 34 building, courtesy of Sancal.

The renovation process revealed several surprises, including original terrazzo flooring with brass joints hidden beneath the raised floor. When shown to Carlos Lamela, son of the original architect, he noted it was a finish he hadn’t known existed in the building—adding another layer to the project’s historical significance.

Social responsibility also played a key role, with students from Asociación Norte Joven, an organisation providing vocational training to at-risk youth, involved in rewiring and transforming old office lighting fixtures into new LED installations.

Beyond its role as a showroom, COLAB will serve as the Madrid headquarters for communications agency Fuego Camina Conmigo, ensuring the space remains dynamic and active. This co-working approach reflects a broader understanding of how contemporary spaces need to function—not as static displays but as living, breathing environments that foster creativity and collaboration.

COLAB pushes us to consider how sustainable design thinking can transform not just materials but our entire approach to fitouts. In an industry often fixated on the new, this project shows that with enough imagination and craft, we can create spaces that are both environmentally responsible and commercially viable—all while telling a story that spans generations of Spanish design. Now, that’s what we call breaking the mould.

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[Images courtesy of Sancal. Photography by Asier Rua.]