Spanish architect Raúl Sánchez has overhauled a long and narrow apartment in Barcelona to create a sequence of rooms lined in patterned tiles, micro-cement, marble and wood (+ slideshow).

Rooms in the 140-square-metre apartment run directly into each other without corridors, so Sánchez used a palette of contrasting materials and colours to help define different spaces.

Each room is decorated in three bands: a grey vaulted ceiling at the top, a section of white-painted wall in the centre, and a contrasting flooring with matching wainscotting at the bottom.

"Two key strategies drive the design as a whole," explained Sánchez.
"The first is that there are no hallways between rooms; they connect directly via an enfilade of sorts. The second decision is structuring all rooms on three sections, based on three levels."
"This gives rise to a series of intermediary spaces that lack a defined code or function, which transforms them into potential play, reading, storage rooms," he added.
"These spaces, which serve as a backbone to the dwelling, don't even feature doors and their partitions fall short of the ceiling, making them, as it were, rooms within an original container space."

Patterned tiles are used in the bathrooms and entrance points to the house, while wood lines the living room and bedroom floors.

Related story: Circular pine wall creates rooms in vaulted basement home by Raúl Sánchez

Strips of white m...