In Barcelona’s Torre Baró neighborhood, architecture studio lablanca has converted a former garage into an annex guest apartment called Llerona. Set on the slopes of the Collserola mountain range, the project works within an irregular shell made up of a main trapezoidal volume and a long, double-height volume next to it.
Inside, the layout follows two conditions tied to the hillside site. A raised concrete foundation block projects above the floor level, and an earth-retaining rear wall recess faces subsurface moisture. The kitchen is treated as a lightweight module that sits on top of the raised plinth. The bathroom takes the excavated recess, which concentrates the wet functions against the subterranean edge of the space.
That “wet core” becomes the project’s organizer. It tightens the circulation path and separates the public living area from the sleeping area tucked into the double-height volume, where the bed sits under top lighting.
For mason contractors and crews watching interior masonry applications, the material choices stand out. To address humidity, partitions and built-in elements, including the bed frame, storage, and the bathroom enclosure, are built from unrendered, breathable concrete masonry units. Saturated red, small-format porcelain stoneware tile clads the kitchen plinth and the rear recess wall, emphasizing the structural moves while tying the palette back to the adjacent main residence.
Contractor takeaways from this kind of adaptive reuse work include:
Confirm elevations and tolerances early when a raised foundation plinth sets the finished-floor geometry for casework and tile.
When a design calls for exposed, unrendered CMU indoors, treat unit selection, coursing, and clean detailing as the final finish scope.
Plan transitions where tile meets CMU and concrete, since the visual read depends on tight terminations around a compact wet core.
Read the full, original article from Designboom here.