© Jordi Folch & Jose Hevia
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THE BUILDING
Casa Burés was built between 1900 and 1905 by the Catalan architect Francesc Berenguer i Mestres, a close collaborator of Antoni Gaudí. The building was named after its first owner, Francesc Burés, a businessman with one of Spain's most successful textile companies.
The building has 7.700 square meters distributed over six floors and is listed since 1979, enjoying the highest protection category as cultural heritage. The building was nearly abandoned for some years and some original elements were vandalized.
After three years of a careful restoration work by the best artisans, Casa Burés has emerged as one of the most representative Modernist-style buildings in Barcelona. The modernist architectural and interior original elements were respected and restored because of both regulatory requirements and a high sensibility of all the stakeholders: developer, city authorities, project team, and the artisans and restoration experts involved in the works.
INTERIOR DESIGN PROJECT
The interior design project of Casa Burés had been carried out by Estudio VILABLANCH and TDB Arquitectura, commissioned by Bonavista Developments.
The challenge: transformation of a historical and listed 19th Century building of Barcelona into 26 exclusive residences of the 21st Century with high-quality common areas, while preserving its original rich heritage.
The interior design project had two goals: to recover and highlight the building's original decorative elements, and to adapt the housing to contemporary regulatory and functional needs in terms of distribution, technology, safety, accessibility, comfort and community.
There was a key and strict strategy: all the original architectural and decorative existing elements were restored, while new materials were added when needed. The new materials should not compete nor imitate the original ones.
The team defined three interior design concepts for this residential building matching the intrinsic qualities of each existing space: three lofts and the basement common areas recovered their original industrial character; two palatial residences were carefully restored respecting the existing modernist elements, and 21 flats were conceived as contemporary residences with rich original elements. The conceptualization included design and definition of materials and finishes(pavements, coatings, colors, kitchens, bathrooms, doors, lighting project, furniture, etc).
