gon architects Scrapes the Hallways Out of a 78 m² Madrid Apartment

Gonzalo Pardo's firm gon architects has reworked a 78 m² apartment in Vicálvaro, Madrid, on a premise the office states flatly: there is no such thing as a standard user. The project, Casa POP, dates to 2026 and counts Santiago and Ángel — a couple whose lives, per the architects, "revolve around enjoyment, knowledge, and culture" — as its owners. Pardo served as lead architect.

The original apartment tells a familiar Spanish story. Developers built it in the 2000s "under the rigid standards of the traditional nuclear family," the architects write, and the result was predictable: a highly compartmentalized layout, full of hallways, that its new owners found obsolete. So gon architects treated the plan as a demolition brief rather than a décor problem.

What does the redesign actually do?

The intervention, in the architects' own framing, insists that "architecture must adapt to unique ways of living" — not the other way around. The compartmentalized 2000s distribution, built around a family model Santiago and Ángel don't inhabit, gives way to a configuration that matches how the couple actually lives. The architects' text is a manifesto more than a floor-plan lecture; the specifics live in the numbers and the furniture list.

The area stays fixed at 78 m². The transformation is organizational: hallways and redundant partitions absorbed into usable space, a layout re-drawn for two people rather than a nuclear-family script.

Who furnished it?

The manufacturers read like a design-fair shortlist:

• &Tradition
• Alessi
• Kartell
• Muuto
• ZETA gon architects x SC Herrajes

That last entry matters most. The ZETA hardware line is a gon architects collaboration with SC Herrajes — the practice didn't just specify handles, it co-designed them. For a 78 m² residential job, that's an unusually deep level of involvement.

Why it matters

Casa POP lands in 2026 as a small, sharp argument against Madrid's enormous stock of early-2000s compartmentalized housing. Pardo's position is simple enough to quote again: no standard user exists, so architecture must adapt. Whether Spain's renovation market takes the hint is a question measured in decades, not square meters.