No Comments »

Olson Kundig Live-Work Studio in Spain

• Tweet

• Tweet

Seattle-based Olson Kundig Architects has designed the live-work home of a photographer and his family in the Spanish coastal town of Sitges.

In Studio Sitges, Tom Kundig pursues his macho signature; large scale, raw concrete and rusty Corten steel.

The entrance in rusted Corten steel offers a large — or a normal size — entrance.

A huge door pivots on its center while a smaller door pivots inside it.

The inventive and macho door captures the casual energy of this cosmopolitan beach town thirty minutes from Barcelona, and just three blocks from the Mediterranean sea.

Kundig adopts his industrial bohemian material palette, avoiding the cloying local traditions of stucco and tiled roofs.

But a peek through the giant door reveals a reinterpretation of a more local tradition; windows framed in the small black muntins that represented the technical limitations of glass technology in the fourteenth century.

The difference is that these sweet traditional muntin windows are floor-to ceiling walls of glazing and, like the front door, pivot out on giant hinges.

The master bedroom cantilevers out over the garden patio.

Indoor or outdoor dining is an option in the balmy climate, under a cantilevered guest suite.

Down a concrete driving ramp underground are two huge double-height raw concrete spaces designed for the client’s large scale photography studio.

Each detail shows the tough, no nonsense Olson Kundig design signature.

The house is designed vertically with four floors.

Spare furniture in the double height spaces includes restored teak tables and comfortable and unpretentious leather armchairs.