Listed house located at the intersection of two narrow streets inside the Roman enclosure of Barcelona. It is likely that it was the quarter of a larger dwelling in the old Jewish quarter. The façades on the streets had been restored in the 60s and could not be modified.
Its four floors above street level have been remodeled, reused and added from the 14th to 19th centuries, and have withstood an occasional earthquake. The basic idea of the renovation is to recover the presence of part of the original courtyard, with the demolition of added slabs that hid it, and to consolidate the interior structure. An elevator next to a staircase serves the offices of a new functional organisation.
The new divisions of the interiors are placed diagonally with respect to the stone walls, as if they were furniture. The twin Gothic windows have been separated from the interior and displayed as if they were objects in a giant display case while the outbuildings they illuminate are distanced from the building in front, located two metres away.
A steel staircase that connects the ground floor with the first one tries to recall the staircases of medieval palaces and rescues an imaginary presence of the original staircase of the house. Being separated from the walls, the staircase seems to float in the courtyard even though it is tied with steel bars to the floor and vertical walls.
The studio, with a triangular plan, rises on a corner of the roof, from the same family as the constructions of the other neighbouring roofs and from which the Gothic bell towers of the neighbourhood can be seen.
