“I was a child of that house,
filled with the memory of its smells,
filled with the coolness of its hallways,
filled with the voices that had given it life,”
writes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, reminding us that home is a parent, a caregiver, a living presence that endures across generations as an inherited legacy.
Monterols is an heirloom of this kind. The twenty-third episode of ‘Stories of Contemporary Domesticity or HOMEland’ — a series curated by Archt. for Archisearch exploring the evolving interpretations of home through contemporary architectural practices — follows NOT~A~STUDIO’s reimagining of Monterols: a 36m², century-old micro-apartment in Barcelona’s Sarrià neighbourhood, transformed into a family heirloom gracefully brought into the 21st century. Through a stripped-down construction process and a vivid yet subtle palette of blues, greens, and yellows, the project reveals how memory, contemporary materiality, and colour can coexist to reshape domestic life without erasing the traces of the past.
In this episode, Melina Arvaniti-Pollatou, founder of Archt. and Editor-in-Chief of Archisearch, speaks with Rocco Bibbiani, founder of Barcelona-based NOT~A~STUDIO, about architecture’s dialogue with history, the transformative power of pigment, and the right to inhabit, in real life, the home of one’s dreams.
Sarrià: a village embedded within the metropolis
Sarrià, one of Barcelona’s oldest neighbourhoods, preserves a distinctive architectural identity shaped by its history as an independent village until its incorporation into the city in 1921. Unlike the dense urban fabric of the Eixample, Sarrià retains an intimate, human-scaled character expressed through narrow streets, irregular squares, and low-rise residential buildings that evoke its medieval origins. Traditional Catalan townhouses, with their stucco façades, wrought-iron balconies, timber shutters, and clay-tiled roofs, define much of the neighbourhood’s architectural landscape.
Numerous nineteenth- and early twentieth-century villas illustrate Sarrià’s transformation from a rural settlement into an affluent suburban enclave. Many of these residences incorporate elements of Catalan Modernisme and Noucentisme, blending ornamental façades, ceramic detailing, and carefully proportioned gardens with traditional construction techniques.
The architectural richness of the neighbourhood lies precisely in the coexistence of these historical layers. Medieval urban morphology, vernacular domestic architecture, and early twentieth-century bourgeois residences create a cohesive yet diverse environment where history remains embedded within everyday life.
A century-old domestic landscape reinterpreted
Within this context, on Monterols Street, NOT~A~STUDIO transforms a 36m² apartment with a 15m² attic, originally built in 1919, into a spacious contemporary one-room studio that fully maximises its exceptional five-metre height. All partition walls were demolished, allowing the previously fragmented interior — once divided into four rooms, including a kitchen, dining area, and a bathroom located externally on the terrace — to breathe again.
The original structural elements are not merely restored but deliberately celebrated.
The Catalan vaults (bovedillas) are recovered and whitewashed together with the surrounding walls, while the metal beams and columns are highlighted through a restrained colour palette that turns them into visual anchors, defining different domestic zones.
The new material language incorporates the warmth of wood, the sleekness of stainless steel, and the serenity of white ceramic tiles, weaving together a playful yet carefully balanced interior defined by material contrasts. Versatility is gracefully integrated into the compact layout: the staircase simultaneously functions as a storage element, while the ceiling of the kitchen and bathroom becomes, at the same time, the floor of the elevated sleeping area.
Functioning as a layered interior landscape where colour, texture, and geometry converge, Monterols enters its second century of life with a postmodern spirit — celebrating diversity, luminosity, and the profound blessing of feeling at home.
Melina Arvaniti-Pollatou: The apartment on Monterols Street is a century-old family home that has remained within the same family for generations. In Stories of Contemporary Domesticity, we often argue that the home is a form of legacy — one that carries memory, identity, and material continuity through time. How did this understanding of the home shape your approach to the renovation?
Rocco Bibbiani: For our studio, understanding the home as a container of living memory was the absolute starting point. When intervening in a century-old space that has belonged to the same family for generations, the greatest mistake is either erasing its traces or, conversely, freezing it in nostalgia. Our approach was based on continuing a process of stripping down the space — one that had actually already begun with the client’s father’s renovation 25 years earlier — in order to reveal its true essence.
We understood that the real legacy did not reside in the fragmented layout of the past, which responded to needs that no longer exist, but rather in its materiality and its volume. By removing the remaining partition walls and exposing the original structure, we cleared the stage so that the layers of family history could continue to breathe, now under a new light.
Respecting the past does not mean replicating it, but rather giving it the necessary energy and freedom to remain functional and relevant for present and future generations.
MAP: Located in Barcelona’s Sarrià neighbourhood, the apartment is embedded within an architectural context shaped by its history as an independent village until 1921, where medieval urban morphology, vernacular domestic architecture, and early twentieth-century bourgeois residences coexist. In what ways did this layered architectural context inform your design decisions?
RB: Sarrià possesses a unique scale within Barcelona; it preserves a village-like spirit, with narrow streets and honest architecture, juxtaposed with the elegance of bourgeois estates. Monterols is a small-scale reflection of this very stratification. Despite having undergone previous renovations, the apartment still contained a dense, dark, and compartmentalised interior morphology, while concealing a monumental ceiling height of almost five metres — an almost palatial condition within a minimal footprint.
Our design decisions sought to create a dialogue with this duality. We wanted to honour the constructive honesty of the traditional architecture of the area — and of Barcelona in general — by exposing the Catalan vaults (bovedillas) and beams, while simultaneously responding to the compact urban condition by completely opening up the interior.
We transformed the apartment into a single, fluid volume that captures outdoor light and reinterprets this unexpected spatial generosity, creating a contemporary and optimistic contrast with the classical surroundings of the neighbourhood.
MAP: In Monterols, the original structural elements become the organising framework of the new intervention, while bold blue, green, and yellow accents establish a distinct spatial identity. What informed your choice of this colour palette? More broadly, what role do you believe colour can play in revealing, transforming, or renewing architecture?
RB: The choice of blue, green, and yellow did not come from a theoretical manifesto or a purely rational approach; it was born from a direct and emotional connection. The clients and I simply shared a passion for this combination of tones. For our studio, the use of colour is fundamentally sensory; it is based on what it makes us feel.
Personally, I like to interpret projects as the blank canvas of a painting.
The exposed structure of Monterols became the surface upon which we began to compose, carefully searching for a visual balance where each colour would have a precise weight within the overall composition. It was not about decorating the space, but about achieving a precise aesthetic equilibrium through chromatic fields.
More broadly, colour in architecture is the element that breaks two-dimensionality and awakens space. It has the capacity to transform perception not through logic, but through vibration. Applied as pigment over volume, colour can renew classical architecture, giving it a purely plastic energy and proving that constructive rigour and the freedom of a painter can coexist within the same space.
MAP: The idea of the “dream house” has long occupied both architecture and the collective imagination. Do you believe such a place exists? If so, how would you define your own idea of a dream home?
RB: Yes, I firmly believe that the dream house exists. But, just like love, it does not necessarily have to be the same one forever.
Human beings are made to change and evolve, and their homes should evolve alongside them. Spaces are intensely lived in, enjoyed, and transformed with us; therefore, the dream house is simply the one that fulfils everything you need at a specific moment in your life and, above all, makes you happy every time you open the door and return to it.
Is Monterols the dream house for my clients? Surely yes — at the precise moment in which they find themselves today. It has been designed to embrace their present, their current needs, and their history.
The ideal home is not a static monument destined to remain unchanged throughout a lifetime, but rather the perfect refuge for the journey you are living now.
Facts & Credits
Project title Monterols
Typology Stories of Contemporary Domesticity, Apartment Renovation, Residential, Interview
Episode 23rd
Location Sarrià, Barcelona, Spain
Status Completed, 2026
Area 36m2
Architecture NOT~A~STUDIO
Lead Architect, Styling & Photography Rocco Bibbiani