The architect’s office explores the studio as both laboratory and mirror of architectural thought. The series examines how space, ritual, tools, and collaboration shape design culture. From intimate ateliers to larger practices, these workplaces reveal values and ambitions—where ideas are tested and identities take form, moving from paper and digital drawing toward the built world.
El Departamento’s Madrid studio translates the practice’s collaborative and material-driven ethos into space. An open-plan layout encourages spontaneous exchange, while glazed rooms preserve focus without severing visual connections. At its core, an ever-evolving materials library brings together wood, ceramics, metals, stone, and textiles, while turning research into a shared, tactile process, allowing textures, colours and light to be tested in real time. Warm, adaptable communal spaces further reinforce a methodology rooted in experimentation, flexibility and collective creativity.
El Departamento’s new Madrid office has been conceived as a spatial expression of the studio’s approach to design.
Taking full advantage of the space’s two large glazed façades, the project maximizes natural light and establishes a work ecosystem based on visual permeability and continuous collaboration.
An uninterrupted visual hierarchy
The layout stems from the desire to keep the team constantly connected.
Most of the footprint is configured as a large open space where the studio’s diverse profiles coexist—a layout that facilitates the organic exchange of ideas, cross-project collaboration, and spontaneous communication.
To address the need for focus and privacy without compromising spatial continuity, the rear area houses three glazed volumes conceived as “fishbowls”.
These enclosures contain a main meeting room, a secondary meeting room, and the private office of the studio’s founders. From here, Alberto Eltini and Marina Martín can maintain a sense of synergy with the rest of the team and a visual connection across the entire office, while ensuring the tranquility and privacy required for moments of deep concentration.
The materials library: the core of the creative process
The functional heart of El Departamento’s new office is the materials area, a living space in constant use.
Structured by industrial-style shelving, the zone houses an extensive, meticulously categorized materials library comprising woods, ceramics, metals, natural stones, and textiles.
At the center of this space is a large workbench designed for composing mood boards and hosting suppliers, equipped with lower shelves for storing materials while keeping the work surface clear.
Above the table hangs a custom-designed luminaire by the brand Ilumisa. Bringing retail lighting technology into the office environment, this lamp allows users to adjust both the intensity and color temperature of the light.
This piece is key to the team’s process, enabling them to visualize the exact behavior of textures and colors under the real lighting conditions of their future commercial projects.
Versatility and warmth in the lounge area
The studio’s entrance breaks away from corporate rigidity to offer a highly versatile, hybrid lounge area.
Furnished with two large chocolate-brown corduroy sofas, natural-fiber poufs, and stone coffee tables, this zone functions as a welcoming, multi-purpose environment. It serves as a daily dining area, an intimate reception space for clients, and a meeting spot for the ATMs—the internal weekly inspiration sessions led by Marina Martín and Alberto Eltini for the team.
This flexibility is complemented by a monitor on a mobile stand that can move throughout the space according to the needs of the day.
Materiality that balances visual noise
Aesthetically, the main challenge of the project was to harmonize the inevitable “visual noise” generated by the vast array of colours and textures from the exposed materials.
To achieve this, the space has been unified through a neutral yet characterful palette. The vertical surfaces are finished in a dark taupe shade that adds depth, balanced by the abundant natural light filtered through light-colored window textiles. In an exercise in structural honesty, the original suspended ceiling was removed, leaving the exposed installations and HVAC ducts visible and painted to match the surrounding palette.
In contrast, the floor has been finished with continuous grey carpeting. This decision not only brings warmth to the space but is also crucial for acoustic absorption, dampening footfalls in a dynamic work environment.
Finally, the studio’s visual order is maintained by concealing purely functional areas, such as the kitchenette and storage, behind a bouclé wool curtain.
ABOUT EL DEPARTAMENTO
We transform our clients’ universes into plausible spaces.
El Departamento is an experimental and daring studio, founded by Alberto Eltini and Marina Martín in early 2017 with the significant challenge of reevaluating the architecture and interior spaces within the historical context we live in.
The studio’s ongoing research in its projects converges contemporary elements with experimentation. Our aim is to build a bridge between strict and rational architecture through free thinking and antiestablishment aesthetics, with the goal of challenging established norms and proposing a new vision. Each project represents an internal revolution that questions everything done so far, under the conscious premise that one cannot reinvent the wheel every day, but it’s worth trying.
Facts & Credits
Project title El Departamento Workspace
Typology Interior, Workplace
Location Madrid
Area 200 sqm
Status Completed, 2026
Architecture El Departamento
General Contractor Triangular
Custom Furniture Central table by El Departamento
Textiles Linum
Flooring Tarkett
Lighting Ilumisa
Photography Olea
This project was submitted to Archisearch through the “Submit a Story” feature, where architects, designers, and creatives are invited to share their work for publication.