Flix House / Gon Architects

Architects: gon architects
Year: 2024
Photographs: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)
Manufacturers: Cubro, Tablas Alcobendas
Lead Architect: Gonzalo Pardo
Design Team: Carol Linares, Cristina Ramírez, María Cecilia Cordero, Nicolas Howden, Maria Camila Martínez.
Construction: REDO Construcción
City: Madrid
Country: Spain

Flix House, designed by gon architects, is a 42 m² attic apartment located in central Madrid, near Callao square. This minimal-sized home features a unique layout divided into four areas: bedroom/dressing room, entrance, workspace/bathroom, and kitchen/living/dining room. The design maximizes natural light and ventilation while incorporating elements like a mirrored bathroom cabin and a compact kitchen structure. At night, the apartment transforms with indirect lighting and a view of the iconic Schweppes sign on Gran Vía.

Attics in the city center are often perceived as attractive, elevated spaces that float above rooftops, partially visible from the street, and not easily accessible. They are sometimes associated with a bohemian lifestyle.

The spatial configuration of the attic, distinct from other building floors, follows urban regulations, typically featuring sloping roofs, large rooms with few partitions, and low height.

Flix House is a 42 m² attic apartment owned by Roberto, located on the sixth floor of a building in central Madrid, built in 1900, near Callao square.

The house was initially organized into two rooms: a rectangular one measuring 10×4 meters with a central fireplace and a square one measuring 3×3 meters. Both rooms had sloping roofs in different directions. This compact house aims to create an optimal, flexible, diverse, and bright living space by effectively utilizing the floor area and especially the vertical section.

To accomplish this, the house is divided into four spatial zones: four consecutive rooms that are physically and visually connected. These zones, arranged from north to south, are the bedroom/dressing room, the entrance, the workspace/bathroom, and the kitchen/living/dining room.

The entrance is a high, elongated space of 8.20 meters, featuring an exterior terrace and an interior blue tunnel with a metal shelf and circular window, evoking the feel of a ship’s interior.

The bathroom, located at the heart of the house, is atomized by separating the sink and toilet from the shower within a 90-centimeter width. This layout maximizes the height of the house and creates areas with different privacy levels.

The sink and toilet are concealed within a mirrored enclosure, 2.10 meters high, accessed from the entrance through a secret door in one of the panels. This strategically placed mirrored cabin expands the space, offering numerous reflections and varying visuals depending on whether the door is half open, fully open, or closed.

The shower, on the other hand, is located within the room and separated from the rest of the house by a wall of glass blocks. These blocks allow natural light to enter during the day while providing the necessary privacy within this space.

The kitchen furniture is designed as a linear structure measuring 5.5 meters long, 60 centimeters wide, and 2.02 meters high. This volume can accommodate up to 1167 m³ and is used to store a large part of the house’s various objects, cleaning products, kitchen utensils, appliances, and clothing, keeping them hidden. The structure features a compact laminated HPL ultra-matte yellow pale wall that brightens the darkest part of the house. It is constructed using standard market measurements for both the hulls and the doors, reducing construction costs.

To maximize natural light and ventilation in the apartment, two additional roof windows were added, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, complementing the existing roof windows. The entrance door was replaced with a transparent glass door, allowing light to pass through even when closed.

The furniture in the house is arranged on a continuous porcelain floor of 1×1 meters and is small but precisely chosen. A table, a sofa, a bed, and four chairs create a cohesive design landscape, articulating and defining each of the different spaces in the house.

At night, the house transforms. The shower cabin becomes a lantern, illuminating the entire domestic space. The Flix House, with its light furniture and indirect lighting, appears to float under a large sloping roof, reminiscent of a Wes Anderson movie set. From the bed, in the silence, the iconic Schweppes sign on the Capitol building on Gran Vía is visible through one of the skylight windows, offering a view that transports one from Madrid to heaven.