B-Side Apartment
The project takes the concept of “B-Side” as its starting point, understood as the possibility of producing another reading from an existing architecture. Previously used as a child psychiatry clinic, the space is transformed into a home through a partial and selective renovation that acknowledges the existing conditions as an active part of the project.
The renovation begins by looking at what was already there. The former clinic contained a series of elements whose dimensions, arrangement and material qualities offered possibilities beyond their original use. Rather than treating them as remnants to be removed, the project takes them as a starting point. Finding, in this sense, involves selecting what can remain, recognising what might change and deciding how these elements can become part of a home.
Rather than responding to a single strategy, the renovation is constructed through a series of precise actions upon what was already there. Preserving, uncovering, relocating, cladding and adding form part of the same process, in which each decision alters the perception and use of the existing space. The superimposition of old and new thus becomes a tool for producing another spatial condition without erasing the memory of the place.
These actions do not affect every part of the apartment in the same way. Some partitions are retained, allowing much of the previous organisation to remain legible, while other elements are altered to accommodate domestic uses. The project is therefore not defined by a complete rearrangement of the plan, but by a series of changes that give another meaning to familiar spaces and objects.
The project works with the found elements, modifying them without the need to erase the organisation that preceded them. An example of this is the shelving from the former surgery. These elements take on a new role within the house. Their main structure is transformed through a series of interventions that enable new relationships and uses to be established with the rooms. Depending on how the space is inhabited, they become storage, a place to rest or an indoor garden, revealing themselves in different ways and taking on a changing role within the home.
The shelving illustrates how a familiar element can be re-edited rather than replaced. Its existing structure remains recognisable, but openings and alterations allow it to be occupied in ways that were not part of its previous function. The pieces are no longer understood only as furniture: they become part of the relationship between the rooms, sometimes containing objects and sometimes accommodating activities. Their new uses emerge from working with what was found rather than starting from a new design.
The B-Side logic also extends to the use of paint and finishes. Colour is understood as a volumetric tool that works with the existing geometry and rhythm, allowing spaces to merge and extend beyond their physical boundaries. Through its application, the limits between different rooms and architectural elements are redefined, introducing new spatial continuities without necessarily altering the existing configuration. Rather than covering or replacing what was there, the intervention re-edits the existing through new relationships of colour, texture and continuity.
The same desire to work with what was found leads to the uncovering of parts of the concrete structure that had previously remained concealed, as well as to the release of the radiators from the enclosures that incorporated them into the former clinic. Both become visible components of the new material expression of the apartment. The operation is not simply about leaving elements exposed, but about recognising in them a physical memory of the place and allowing that previous condition to contribute to the identity of the home.
The exposed concrete, the radiators and the modified shelving are not treated as isolated features. Together with the retained partitions and the new finishes, they form part of an apartment in which different moments remain visible. What is added does not seek to conceal everything that came before; it changes the way those elements are seen and used.
B-Side therefore describes a way of intervening based on transformation rather than replacement. Like the alternative side of the same recording, the renovation works with recognisable elements to produce another possible composition. The result does not seek to present an entirely new home, but rather to activate possibilities already contained within an architecture that had its own history.
