In Madrid’s El Rastro district, Tural Studio transforms an 1880 apartment on Ribera de Curtidores into a contemporary home structured around three essential acts of domestic life: eat, enjoy and love. Working with the apartment’s existing architecture, the renovation turns its structural rhythm into a framework for everyday life, with three existing bays becoming three distinct yet interconnected domestic worlds. Each develops its own function, atmosphere and material identity, while together they compose an eclectic interior where industrial, Space Age and rustic elements coexist in a carefully balanced dialogue. Rather than seeking stylistic uniformity, the project embraces contrast as a way of articulating different modes of inhabitation, allowing architecture to unfold as a continuous narrative shaped by the rituals, pleasures and intimacies of living.
The setting is an essential part of that narrative. Ribera de Curtidores lies at the heart of El Rastro, one of Madrid’s most characteristic and enduring urban environments, where every Sunday the street is transformed by the city’s famous flea market. The name Ribera de Curtidores evokes the area’s industrial past, when tanneries (curtidores) occupied the street and animal hides were transported through the neighbourhood, leaving behind the traces from which El Rastro is traditionally said to have taken its name.
Today, this layered history remains embedded in the identity of the neighbourhood, where historic architecture, commerce and craftsmanship intersect with the everyday rhythms of domestic life, creating the distinctive urban atmosphere that defines El Rastro.
Dating from 1880, the building comprises three storeys and an attic, with the first floor distinguished by its greater height. Inside the apartment, load-bearing walls running parallel to the main and rear façades generate three structural bays.
This existing configuration becomes the project’s defining architectural resource. Tural Studio opens and recalibrates the three bays, assigning each to a fundamental dimension of domestic life: the kitchen and dining space as a place of gathering, the living room as a space for enjoyment and connection with the city, and the bedroom as a more intimate environment focused on care and intimacy.
The intervention is consequently as much about revealing as it is about transforming.
Original mouldings, doors, glazing, handles, fittings and radiators are retained alongside exposed brick, structural elements and traces of former paint layers.
Against this inherited fabric, a bold palette of colour, glazed ceramic, exposed installations and red joinery introduces a contemporary language, bringing together industrial, rustic and Space Age references.
Across the apartment, old and new enter into a deliberate dialogue, allowing the character of the 1880 building and the rhythms of contemporary domestic life to coexist.
Eat
The kitchen forms the central axis of the home, allowing everyday life from the other two spaces to subtly filter into it.
A casual beer or glass of wine can just as easily become a traditional cocido, turning the kitchen into both a functional centre and a social meeting point.
Organized symmetrically around a central island, the kitchen deliberately avoids extending the cabinetry upwards. This decision preserves the visual presence of the original exposed-brick party wall, allowing it to remain part of the experience of the space during meals. Opposite the kitchen, a long white table consolidates the dining area and reinforces its connection to the central axis of the home.
Enjoy
Life is meant to be enjoyed—whether doing nothing on the sofa, working on what you are passionate about, or becoming the quintessential Rastro onlooker on Sunday mornings.
The living room occupies the bay facing the street, where three balconies are kept completely open and free of partitions.
Original architectural elements—including the mouldings, ceiling rosettes and radiators—are preserved, allowing the character of the historic apartment to remain legible. The openness of the room strengthens its relationship with the street and, in particular, with the distinctive atmosphere of El Rastro beyond the windows.
Love
The bedroom occupies the third bay, conceived around the idea that the first thing in life—and upon arriving home—is to take care of oneself and to love as a couple.
Here, the bed and sink articulate the circulation, while a lattice screen inspired by the natural world provides privacy for the shower area.
The hallway is also reconfigured to accommodate a guest toilet. Redefining this bay was undoubtedly the most complex part of the construction process, requiring the existing spatial organization to be carefully reconsidered while maintaining continuity with the rest of the home.
Materially, the entire apartment is presided over by a large red joinery system, inspired by the traditional enclosures found throughout Madrid and, more specifically, by the windows of the nearby Galerías Piquer.
This strong architectural gesture provides a contemporary layer while establishing a dialogue with the neighbourhood’s inherited character.
The renovation preserves as many original elements as possible.
Mouldings, doors, door glazing, handles, fittings and two radiators are retained, while the exposed-brick party wall, the vertical supports of the load-bearing walls and traces of the apartment’s former layers of paint are brought back into view. These remnants become an active part of the apartment’s new identity, connecting its contemporary interventions with the history of the building.
The same approach extends to the installations, which are intentionally left exposed: visible copper plumbing and braided electrical cables for the switches become part of the interior composition. Colour further distinguishes the different domestic functions through Seville crackle-glazed ceramic tiles. White ceramic is paired with dark-green radiators in the bedroom; dark-green ceramic and green radiators define the kitchen; while caramel ceramic is combined with red radiators in the living area.
Tural Studio creates a carefully balanced dialogue between inherited elements and contemporary interventions, allowing colour, material and detail to connect the three spaces into a single domestic narrative: a home organised around the simple rituals of eating, enjoying and loving.
About Tural Studio
Tural is an architecture and interior design studio that conceives spaces as a continuity between what we feel and what we inhabit. Its work creates places that tell stories through colour and material, drawing inspiration from nature, inherited heritage and the work of the great masters. Each project becomes an opportunity for holistic design, combining research, sensitivity and contemporary relevance.
The studio aims to create an impact on the lives of those who inhabit and move through its spaces, crafting environments that inspire emotion and endure over time. Tural accompanies clients and brands from the initial concept through to final execution, attending to every detail so that the user experience guides the entire design process.
Facts & Credits
Project title Eat, Enjoy, Love
Typology Interiors, Renovation, Residential
Location Ribera de Curtidores, Madrid
Year 2021
Architecture Tural studio
Photography Alberto Amores