Does anyone actually know if there was a real princess behind the name of the well-known Barcelona street, Calle de la Princesa ? Of course there was, H. R. H. Isabel de Borbón y Borbón, Princess of Asturias, a twice recognized first heir to the throne of Spain who never actually reigned. She knew very well the difference between a stately queen and a princess of the people and she was very much the latter. A true people’s princess who became very popular, pure Madrid, the city which nicknamed her “la chata”. If we come back to Barcelona, a city with the noble title of Condal incidentally, a very non-specific name was given to the street which followed on from Calle Fernando – De la Princesa, or Princess Street. The decision was probably inspired by a touch of republicanism. Using such a non-specific name avoided saying which of the many well-known princesses it so graciously referred to. It’s not a bad way of giving a nod to all those playing a minor role throughout history, a practical solution which appeases everybody – streets, avenues and drives named after unspecified generals, primates and supreme commanders. When you come up against so many different interests, a right balance must be struck where you will unavoidably annoy everybody to a certain extent, but you don’t lose sense of what you want to achieve. In other words, the same applies to everybody, lump it or like it.
Where Calle de la Princesa meets the Ciutadella Park, the first floor of a solemn, bourgeoisie type building is being transformed into a hotel. A wide marble staircase takes us up to what was once a luxurious residence and later was uncompromisingly converted into a school. The layout bears witness to the fact it must have been run on very traditional lines. Despite such a graceless conversion, many traces of decorative cornices, carved doors and painted ceilings have managed to survive the rigours of a school regime. The concept for the present conversion is different this time as the design takes into account the interests of two distinct groups and promotes a sense of restoration.
The first group are the residents already living in the building and who will live there for the foreseeable future. From now on they will have to share with hotel guests who come to the city to relax and enjoy their leisure. The other group are the earnest champions of the scrolls, cherubs and other ornaments belonging to the heritage of a more refined age, the conservationists. Their role is to ensure we don’t forget certain parts of our history. Even though the building will need to be subdivided for its new use, the refurbishment will seek to restore the first floor to its former glory in a way which suits both interest groups.
The new structure will keep the regimented classroom layout while aiming to create little idyllic oases which give the sensation of belonging to a wide-open space. In each room the shower, wash basin and toilet will be housed in a well-defined nucleus around which a distinctive design for each individual room is based. The walls to each of the rooms will be built in accordance with the new design while respecting features from the original structure, its plasterwork and painted decoration, but without actually adhering to the same layout. Cornice strips and wall festoons will cross the new divisions, sweeping in and out of rooms, evoking their origins in more generously spaced quarters. The upper third of the rooms will be covered with mirrors. As the mirrors face one other, the scrolls, frames, cornices and parts of former walls are multiplied into infinity. The trick is in trying to create the sensation of a larger space, a stronghold of intimacy in an illusory greater living space which is now reduced from the superstructure of a distant past.
The neutrality of the semi-prefabricated nucleus and the informal design of the walls and curtains allow such echoes from the past to endure in its adornments and the illusion of a stately room, helping to create a new experience. Just like the silly idea of playing a princess from the past, even though she never actually succeeded to the throne.

A headlight is taken from a car with a retro look from an era which never really existed. The headlight is co-copied completely freely to adorn a light bulb with a smelted aluminium keel. The project, however, required a more practical co-copy of a different, spotlight made of plastic, supposedly a best-seller, and this was dutifully taken into account during the design process. Clairvoyant minds counselled by advice from anonymous visionaries came to the fleeting conclusion that plastic looks cheap and the material must be upgraded to a higher category. This is when the aluminium casting comes back in. Although this technique remodels the design, the light is unable to disown its origins in an imaginary glutinous substance of plastic.

Click. Nothing over here, nothing over there. I can see, but I don’t quite understand.  But who wants to understand? It’s not a lamp, it’s light.  Pure and simple – when activated, it lights up objects and makes them visible. There is no defined shape, nor a privileged point of view. It lights you up in as many ways as you are able to look at it. It coyly hides its face, even from the photographer who is trying to find the ideal profile for a catalogue portrait – click, click, click.
Composed of two parts, which once switched on – click – fuse into one luminous cloud which appears to have no source. The illuminated part is a piece of glass with an elliptic base, which contorts itself through 90 degrees while diminishing in size to become a smaller ellipse, unrestricted by shape and form. The base is made of white ceramic which disappears – click – when it gives off light.
Click and a cloud of light was created.

Sometimes, but only sometimes, things are much more straightforward than they look. Others are and even look as though they are. Here you have us in a former factory complex originally used by furriers and now – or more precisely, for quite some time now – has become a hive crawling with designers, architects, graphic artists, photographers and, wait for it, knowledge managers. The last profession in the list is indeed a ray of hope for this territory of ours of hopeless administrators, with those they manage being even worse. In the midst of such a rabble, a mess not even a pimp can understand, we receive an assignment which isn’t one as such, but will bring us fame and recognition. What we mean is a fame of the short-lived type at the family dinner table which we won’t make a penny from.
Well, let’s get back to what we were saying. If things aren’t straightforward sometimes, just sometimes, you have to make them straightforward.
We are standing on the top floor of a building in a turn-of-the-century factory complex. Due to its original use this is a space large, rectangular space with ceilings several metres high, windows in the two long walls running from east to west and a floor which has more pot holes than Barcelona beach after a trendy, all-night rave. As we are such smart asses and the right amount of pretension is just for show to the outside world, we are left with what is of interest to us. What we don’t like, we concrete over.
The first task was to create a new floor over the existing one, this time an even surface, a characteristic generally well appreciated by the majority of the population. The second was a drastic, but faultless decision – divide the space into as many different areas of use as we’d been asked to. Thus an area for graphic design was created and second one for a photographer’s studio, both separated by a raised platform towards the photographer’s studio. This raised platform institutionalised such a popular, but badly paid profession, also considered one of the worst due to its condition of a constant voyeur, or snooper.
But that’s where our hopes were dashed. Without getting told off, we realised that nothing was so straightforward. A response, however, had to be given to the basic needs of the new functions. Segregable spaces were required, areas which could be made private and offer visual control of those entering…. but every cloud has a silver lining. That’s if it had ever been bad and not the result of our slothful inertia. We started mumbling tavern songs. We adjusted the stand a little and, now with just the right touch of pretension, a bulb lights us up. Well, it was more of a flash, and what it did was dazzle us. Damn it.
Two basic areas needed to be created – for graphics and photography – but with the aim of conserving the sense of spaciousness. The main strategy consisted in defining the different work areas in a subtle way, providing them with the required infrastructure without interfering with the extensive perception of the space. To do so, one, two, three movements were proposed.

One – The floor in the main room is paved with wood in three rectangular areas. The electricity and IT sockets are begging to colonised by tables. These tables are large, metal structures on which lit computer screens are placed. Although not being used as a work tool, they give the impression of activity, something pleasing to the clients’ eye. The absence of infrastructures in the central strip determines it be kept as a broad walkway which leads from the entrance to the photography studio.
The imperative need to have spaces with more privacy for meetings and to cosset the hierarchical structure meant the petrified wood flooring would fold upwards to surround and privatise. The wall coverings from the cubicles which emerged were finished with glass panels, so as not to obstruct the light coming in from the windows and to still be able to see the original factory walls. It’s a little as if you lift up the carpet and crawl underneath, whether to debate thorny issues, or because you are tired of the hassles from your colleague at the work desk. Providing it’s not full of the filth people tend to sweep away far from the sight of others, of course.

Two. A pair of curtains. It seemed to a subtle enough way to partially segregate areas – not permanently, not completely, but as desired. Two ellipses made of velvet hang from the ceiling. One of them protects you from the gaze of newcomers once they have crossed the entrance threshold. Likewise, it helps such visitors to discover the space little by little – there is always the suspicion that there must be something behind a curtain and even more so behind one hanging from such a height. Very few can resist the temptation to gently draw back the velvet and venture into the space behind. Well, the idea of “venturing” is relative, because there isn’t really much danger as such. On the other side the central wooden aisle stretches out obstacle-free with the cubicles and worktables side by side. At the end there is the hint of what appears to be an attempt at a second velvet ellipse.

Here is number three, the stands. As the photography studio calls for different light and sound conditions to those required by graphic design work and administration, there is a definite segregation between the two spaces. Use is made of this need to build stands, which turns their back on the first space and blatantly look at the photographed subjects. The second ellipse appears once more in this second space, giving a certain sense of intimacy to the mirrors where the photogenic subjects, make-up and clothing are prepared. Once dressed up, they come out to be immortalised, shamelessly dressed, as is the custom at present, while they are observed from the slope with none too few rather more basic thoughts.
Three, four and maaaaambo. Ah ha!

A mirror looks, but you can only tell by looking into it. When conspiratorial glances become established between two mirrors, an endless process is triggered off where the subject-object dichotomy loses its meaning and enters into an infinite repetition where the two merge into one. When two mirrors feel close to one another, it’s natural for them to be tempted to face one another. The fact something becomes entrapped within their game shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s the Hairdresser Effect, an endless illusion of an object or place entrapped between two mirrors which are looking at one another.
A small store for glassware is traversed by illusory holes, perforations intimated by pairs of mirrors which look into each other, look back and then look again. Several red glass screens join in the game of glances by compartmentalising the mirrors while perturbing the sense of space. They form warm shafts of light which stretch out beyond the range of visual perception.
The street is reflected inside, reproducing itself at the back of the space thanks to mirrors which have sought their partner on the outside. But we are the only ones who can be this pair, who look at each other and recognise ourselves in such an undefined place. What we thought was a small shop, we discover on entering is something which has reinvented itself as an illusion of a high building.
The mirrors dictate all the rules on the inside as well as offer a blueprint for the building work. Thus circular stainless steel frames contain the mirrors, hold the red glass screens, mark out the showroom space and create a layout, which the metal staircase uses to become enveloped in the sheeted panels and climb up to the first floor.

El Born is a part of the city lined with narrow streets and alleyways, the only space where the densely packed old part of town allows people to move freely. A structure with medieval origins stands on a site where knights competed in tournaments, from which the district got its name, and where a covered market was later established by opening up a large square. Selling on the street is done differently – a stall, a street market, illegal street vendors, a stand amidst the to-ing and fro-ing, hawkers which use the ground to show off their wares. We find ourselves in the busiest part of the area where there are unexpected narrow alleyways which the sun can barely reach. We have now moved on from the former market to the assortment of shops facing out to the street. 
All these ideas led us to create a new kind of street, a space where people come and go, a hidden alleyway with a street market, a place for commerce. Sales are transacted in this shop which connects two different streets, a passageway signposted in large, bright letters. Theses give it an identity and once in place on the inside they establish a space and create a layout suitable for exchange, for trade.
Minimum intervention was required. The number of arched hollows in the façades increases in the calles de Esparteria and del Bonaire, meaning that even when the shop is closed you can pass from one street to the next. The ceiling’s Catalan vault and beam structure was left bare and was painted black just like the cast-iron pillars which hold it up. The existing concrete flooring was simply cleaned, cleared of obstacles and the problem of a continuous line on one of the side walls was solved by painting a graffiti mural in large letters. The other side accommodates the bathrooms and a small storeroom and the stone in the wall has been left bare as a finish. A contrast is thus made between the two sides with the continuity of the graffiti on the other wall highlighted above the flooring.
This is the flooring where clothes on sale can be displayed on carpets of metal-sheeting, a part of tubular structures which can be laid out at will. The layout for these structures will be determined by large luminous letters whose displaced shadow could very well be graffiti stretching over the floor and wall. Each one of the letters is made up of a tubular steel structure covered at the sides by a stainless steel sheets with open welded joints, leaving the two main sides of each letter to be completed with a methacrylate sheet on which stamped vinyl will be attached to give it a final finish.
One of the letters is mounted on sturdy wheels so it can be taken to the entrance and show one of its sides to the street. Looking as if they had fallen from an enormous imaginary luminous sign, the letters provide an advertisement to the outside as well as lighting and a definition for the layout for the space inside.

Amongst living beings there are those who live in groups, amongst equals. Others are lone, solitary beings.  The equals try very hard to be noticed in the presence of the others – in order to live they need to be one amongst many. The lone ones tend to camouflage themselves against the background, for safety reasons, to surprise their prey. Some are even capable of changing their outward appearance, of transforming their image in a way which suits them most in order to go unnoticed, to blend in with the moment and the place. This is a strategy.
In BT a paradoxical hybridisation has been developed between this strategy and living within a group of stores in a shopping centre. A translucent, interior surface has been chosen which is able to change its light properties like someone who is mirroring the light of day. The varying nature of the surface as the hours go by individualises the space in contrast to its inalterable neighbours, which maintain a constant appearance. This process constructs a repeated retail space of fixed dimensions, but attracts our attention during the morning, along the day and through the night.
The variation of light and its impersonation of daylight become a brand image. Luminous qualities take the place of furniture, objects and names. Identification comes from the atmosphere and not from something tangible.
This time round the animal is characterised by several translucent modular structures in aluminium and polycarbonate which house the whole radiant morass.  The minimal L-shape form of these units creates illuminated surrounds covering the walls and ceiling. The way they are fitted is not so important, as they are always adapted to the given space in the store in question, to characteristics such as the store’s ability to control the light which dominates the atmosphere and to draw in passers-by from the outside.