CASA HORTA BY GUILLERMO SANTOMÀ

CASA HORTA BY GUILLERMO SANTOMÀ (2016)

BARCELONA
OCT 29 2016

“To construct is to deconstruct”, is the design philosophy the multifaceted Spanish born architect Guillermo Santomà. It is with this exact mythology he set about renovating his Barcelona home, Casa Horta. The transformation of the infamous construction is perhaps Santomà most famous project to date.

The house is a three-story building, the oldest part dating back to the early 1900s. The place was dusty, and somewhat abandoned when Santomà decided to make it his home. With the aim to create as much light and continuity as possible, the home reflects the designers creative outlook: inspired by fiction, he transforms reality into fantasy while maintaining functionality. The kitchen and dining room are pink, even the light switches and plug sockets are painted, this complete covering of the interior surfaces in one tone turns the paint into a construction material rather than its traditional use as a color accent, intensifying the impact.

"The home reflects the designers creative outlook: inspired by fiction, he transforms reality into fantasy while maintaining functionality"

The wall of the downstairs dining room is muraled by a friend of Guillermo; dripping black and white pieces of fruit, a flying carpet and a palm tree float around the wall as a fictitious reflection of the content of the room. The dripping walls are echoed by the dining chairs designed by Santomà, plastic garden seats, deconstructed through melting, so the backs are partly missing, then frozen mid-melt, then thickly painted in same pink that covers the walls. This continuation of colour underpins of Guillermo’s work, his pieces grow from one another, no piece is singular, they connect and mix materials, colours and forms “you don’t quite know where one thing ends, and another begins” he says. The whole house follows that same logic, he sees his home as something that has grown, rather than been designed, it is a reaction to time and space and each room a continuation of the previous, undefined by the traditional boundaries of a house.

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