EXTENDO
Architects: Arquivir Arquitectos
Photographer: Luis Fernando Peña Villoria – Artico Arquitectura
How can one achieve up to three bedrooms in a long, narrow 850-square-foot home, all while still saving space for the kitchen, bathroom and living room?
When he set out to renovate this Madrid home, architect Alejandro Postigo Faci came up with an alternative to the classic, immobile distribution of bedrooms, bathrooms, a dining room and a kitchen: he made mobile partitioning the central idea of the project.
The Challenge:
These are the key aspects around which he designed the project: “The first challenge consisted of achieving energy efficiency by using specific building solutions and high-performance machines. The second was centered around taking advantage of the space with retractable bedrooms.”
The Result:
The result is surprisingly comfortable: a home that can be easily be customized from one moment to the next, thanks to retractable bedrooms with built-in furniture. These room are able to appear or disappear, depending on the users’ needs, reallocating space to those rooms that are truly being used at that time.
The home’s long, narrow layout limited the configuration options to a hallway off which a series of bedrooms would be located. Therefore, in this case, sliding partitions were the best way to create a flexible space in which daytime and nighttime spaces could change size.
Alejandro Postigo Faci designed retractable modules, structured with transversely sliding dividers. When the divider is moved, the room contracts, disappearing. The space previously taken up by said room gets reallocated to the dining room or living room, immediately multiplying the size of these common areas.
Thus, while the bathroom and dressing room are permanently located in the middle of the home, the two bedrooms on either side can be shrunk down until they completely disappear. Wood partitions, which also serve as storage spaces, join together by sliding along sophisticated rails installed into the ceiling, leaving the floor free of any marks indicating this change in use.
These retractable bedrooms can be closed off with sliding glass doors guided by KLEIN®’s recessed telescopic Extendo system. As this system is telescopic in nature, it requires very little storage space and allows for large entryways free of barriers on the floor. When the bedrooms are compacted, the mobile panels are hidden within the permanent wood partition walls, which are installed perpendicular to the mobile piece.
Furthermore, the living room can be divided in two with a sliding bookshelf, thus creating a third bedroom.
This variable layout allows those living in the home to truly take advantage of its natural light, and it has been a key component in giving occupants the freedom to make decisions about the space where they live, as they tailor different rooms to their specific needs throughout the day.