contact_office_magazine_#38_EN

Offices from across the world
White and rattan
and terracotta.
The renovation of Casa Pich i Pon in Barcelona was completed just a few weeks
ago. The result is a stylish yet cosy coworking space that looks far more expensive
than the budget suggests. We had to take a look for ourselves!
© Hevia
© Hevia
“Would you believe that these rooms used to be
painted ochre yellow? With brown doors and dark
tiled floors? And worst of all, that the entire building
was half-heartedly ‘renovated’ back in the eighties
with what proved to be a distinct lack of architectural
flair? When we first set foot in these rooms, there
were built-in cupboards everywhere, fake veneers and
suspended ceilings.” Jordi Llort, a 35-year-old project
manager at the Catalonian architectural agency
SCOB – named after the two partners Sergi Carulla
and Oscar Blasco – sits down in a somewhat jauntily
positioned rattan chair and looks around. “I think
we’ve really cleaned up the space, and even worked
well with the heritage building authorities!”
Casa Pich i Pon on Plaça de Catalunya was built in
1922 and was once one of the proudest landmarks of
the Catalonian capital. It was designed for the great
industrialist Juan Pich i Pon, a newspaper publishing
house owner who also installed Barcelona’s first
traffic lights and even served as the city’s mayor for
several years, shaping its political history. He found a
kindred spirit in the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch,
a member of the Noucentisme cultural movement (the
“architectural style of the new century”), who built
him a stylish, simple, ultramodern office building
with a roof terrace and two small corner turrets. With
his own lift – a technology recently imported from
Chicago – Pich i Pon was able to fashion himself a
luxurious penthouse on the sixth floor.
© Hevia
“This building is part of the city’s history”, says
Llort, “but sadly it was really poorly cared for and
got to such a sorry state that it fell further and
further into the background, always overshadowed
by the work of Antoni Gaudí. I’m really glad we got
this amazing commission.” The client is the Spanish
property management company Merlin Properties,
which operates a swathe of coworking spaces in
Madrid and Barcelona through its Loom subsidiary.
It wanted to create its flagship Loom space in Casa
Pich i Pon, demanding bright rooms and a radically
cleaner aesthetic without compromising on cosiness.
Its aim was for workers to feel just as at home as they
would in their grandmothers’ cottages up in the
Pyrenees.
“It proved to be quite a balancing act maintaining
the historic features while incorporating modern
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