The City and its Interior

Lecture delivered as part of the conference series, Foros ESARQ 2014: Transformations, at the Escola Tecnica Superior d’Arquitectura, Barcelona, 28 April 2014.

The lecture explored the relationship between the making of interiors and the experience of a city. For the refurbishment of the apartment on Carrer Avinyó, David Kohn Architects employed several strategies to connect the interior of the apartment to Barcelona. The first was the most literal, to remove those dividing walls that prevented the unusual triangular plan of the apartment from being enjoyed. The second was to treat the interior as a public space, replete with its own monuments. A diminutive version of Coderch’s Barceloneta apartment building was placed at one end of the interior to provide two bedrooms; a balcony wraps around one wall providing a vantage point from which overlook the interior, as the apartment balconies overlook the street below. Lastly, the practice worked closely with Catalan craftsmen to find new techniques for making encaustic tiles with graded colour, which were used throughout the interior. The relationships between the interior of a Room for London and the surrounding city were also discussed to illustrate the thesis.